THE  LIBRARY 
OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


Ancient  Classics  for  English  Readers 

EDITED   BY   THE 

REV.  W.  LUCAS  COLLINS,  M.A. 


PLAUTUS  AND  TERENCE 


A    SERIES    OF 


ANCIENT  CLASSICS 


ENGLISH    READERS. 


EDITED  BY 


IR,  IBV.    "W.    LTJO-^S     C  O  31  HL  I  ItsT  S. 
20  Vols.     Small  i2mo.    Fine  cloth.    $1.00  each. 


NOW  COMPLETE,   EMBRACING 


1.  HOMER'S    ILIAD. 

2.  HOMER'S    ODYSSEY. 

3.  HERODOTUS. 

4.  C7ESAR. 

5.  VIRGIL,. 

6.  HORACE. 

7.  AESCHYLUS. 

8.  XENOPHON. 

9.  CICERO. 
10.   SOPHOCLES. 


11.  PLINY. 

12.  EURIPIDES. 

13.  JUVENAL. 

14.  ARISTOPHANES. 

15.  HESIOD  &  THEOGNIS. 

16.  PLAUTUS  &  TERENCE. 

17.  TACITUS. 

18.  LUCIAN. 

19.  PLATO. 

20.  GREEK    ANTHOLOGY. 


The  aim  of  this  delightful  series  of  books  is  to  explain,  suf- 
ficiently for  general  readers,  who  these  great  writers  were,  and 
what  they  wrote ;  to  give,  wherever  possible,  some  connected 
outline  of  the  story  which  they  tell,  or  the  facts  which  they  re- 
cord, checked  by  the  results  of  modern  investigations ;  to  present 
some  of  their  most  striking  passages  in  approved  English  transla- 
tions, and  to  illustrate  them  generally  from  modern  writers ;  to 
serve,  in  short,  as  a  popular  retrospect  of  the  chief  literature  of 
Greece  and  Rome. 

"  Each  successive  issue  only  adds  to  our  appreciation  of  the  learning  and 
skill  with  which  this  admirable  enterprise  of  bringing  the  best  classics  within 
easy  reach  of  English  readers  is  conducted." — New  York  Independent. 

"  One  of  the  most  ingenious  and  successful  literary  enterprises  of  the  day." 
-Every  Saturday. 

J.  B.  LIPPINGOTT  &  CO.,  Publishers, 

715  and  717  Market  St.,  Philadelphia. 


BY  THE 


REV.    W.    LUCAS    COLLINS,    M.A. 

AUTHOR  OF 
•ETONIANA/  'THE  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS,'  ETC 


PHILADELPHIA 

J.    B.    LIPPINCOTT    &    CO. 
1875. 


NOTE. 


THESE  pages  are  much  indebted  to  M.  Guizot's  volume 
entitled  '  Menandre  ;  Etude  Historique,  &c.  : '  also  to 
Mr  Dunlop's  '  History  of  Eoman  Literature.' 

No  attempt  has  been  made  to  avoid  roughness  in 
the  metre  of  the  translations  from  Plautus  and  Ter- 
ence ;  they  can  hardly  be,  in  this  respect,  more 
irregular  than  the  originals. 

W.  L.  C. 


2041844 


CONTENTS. 


CHAP.  FACE 

I.    INTRODUCTORY  —  THE   ANCIENT  COMIC  DRAMA,          .  1 

II.    MENANDEU, 6 

III.  VLAUTUS, 30 

IV.  THE   COMEDIES   OF   PLAUTIT8  : —        ....  35 

THE  THREE  SILVER  PIECES  —  THE  BRAGGADOCIO — 
THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE — THE  SHIPWRECK— THE  CAP- 
TIVES—  THE  TWO  MENJECHMI — AMPHITRYON — THE 
POT  OF  GOLD — THE  TRICKSTER — THE  YOUNG  CAR- 
THAGINIAN— STICHU8,  ETC. 

V.  TERENCE 95 

VI.    THE   COMEDIES   OF  TERENCE  : —         .  .  .  .100 

THK  MAID  OF  ANDROS— THE  MOTHER-IN-LAW — THE 
SELF-TORMENTOR— THE  ETHIOPIAN  SLAVE — PHOU- 
MIO— THE  BROTHERS. 


PLAUTUS  AND  TERENCE. 


CHAPTEE  I. 

INTRODUCTORY — THE    ANCIENT    COMIC    DRAMA. 

THE  Comedies  of  Plautus  and  Terence  are  all  tliat 
remains  to  us  of  the  Roman  Comic  Drama.  It  is 
impossible  to  deal  with  the  works  of  these  writers, 
even  in  so  slight  a  sketch  as  is  contemplated  in 
this  volume,  without  some  previous  reference  to  the 
Greek  originals  from  which  they  drew.  For  the 
Roman  drama  was,  more  than  any  other  branch  of 
Roman  literature,  an  inheritance  from  Greece;  one  of 
those  notes  of  intellectual  sovereignty  which  that  mar- 
vellous people  impressed  upon  their  conquerors.  The 
plays  which,"  during  five  hundred  years,  i'rom  the  days 
of  the  Scipios  to  those  of  Diocletian,  amused  a  Roman 
audience,  had  as  little  claim  to  be  regarded  as  national 
productions  as  the  last  happy  "  adaptation  "  from  the 
French  which  enjoys  its  brief  run  at  an  English 
theatre. 

But  when  we  speak  of  Greek  Comedy  in  its  relation 
to  the  Roman  Drama,  we  must  not  form  our  idea  of 

A.  c.  vol.  xvi.  A 


2  THE  ANCIENT  COMIC  DRAMA. 

Comedy  from  the  plays  of  Aristophanes.  It  so  happe** 
that  lie  stands  before  us  moderns  as  the  sole  surviving 
representative,  in  anything  like  discernible  shape,  of 
the  comic  drama  at  Athens.  But  his  brilliant  bur- 
lesques, with  their  keen  political  satire,  their  wealth  of 
allusion,  their  mad  extravagance  of  wit  pushed  even  to 
buffoonery,  have  not  much  more  in  common  with  the 
plays  of  Plautus  and  Terence  than  with  our  modern 
parlour  comedy  as  we  have  it  from  Mr  Robertson  or 
Mr  Byron. 

It  has  been  said,  when  we  parted  from  Aristophanes 
in  a  former  volume  of  this  series,  that  the  glories  of 
the  old  Athenian  comedy  had  departed  even  before  the 
great  master  in  that  school  had  put  his  last  piece  upon 
the  stage.  The  long  War  was  over.  The  great  game 
of  political  life  no  longer  presented  the  same  intense 
excitement  for  the  players.  Men's  lives  and  thoughts 
had  begun  to  run  in  a  narrower  channel.  As  a  poli- 
tical engine,  there  was  no  longer  scope  or  occasion  for 
the  comic  drama.  And  again,  it  was  no  longer  easy 
to  provide  that  costly  and  elaborate  spectacle, — the 
numerous  Chorus,  highly  trained  and  magnificently 
costumed,  the  machinery,  the  decorations,  and  the 
music, — which  had  delighted  the  eyes  of  Athenian 
playgoers  none  the  less  because  their  intellect  was  keen 
enough  to  appreciate  every  witticism  of  the  dialogue. 
It  must  be  remembered  that  the  expense  of  mounting 
a  new  play — arid  this  must  always  have  been  consider- 
able where  the  theatres  were  on  such  a  vast  scale — was 
not  a  matter  of  speculation  for  author  or  manager,  as 
with  us,  but  a  public  charge  undertaken  in  turn  by 
the  richer  citizens ;  and  in  which  those  who  sought 


INTRODUCTORY.  3 

popularity,  in  order  to  advance  their  own  political 
claims,  vied  with  each  other  in  the  liberality  of  their 
expenditure.  But  at. the  close  of  the  Peloponnesian 
War,  many  a  noble  family  found  itself  impoverished 
by  the  long  and  terrible  struggle, and  the  competition  for 
public  office  had  probably  lost  much  of  its  charm.  The 
stage  followed  the  temper  of  the  nation  :  it  became  less 
violently  political,  less  extravagant  and  more  sedate. 
Shall  one  venture  to  say  that,  like  the  nation,  it  lost 
something  of  its  spirit  1  There  was  method,  we  must 
remember,  in  the  mad  licence  of  Aristophanes.  Bitter 
as  he  was  against  his  political  opponents,  it  was  an 
honest  bitterness,  and  Cleon  was  his  enemy  because  he 
believed  him  to  be  the  enemy  of  the  state.  Socrates 
and  Euripides  were  caricatured  in  the  most  unsparing 
fashion,  for  the  amusement  of  the  audience,  and  it  was 
convenient  for  a  professional  jester  to  have  two  such 
well-known  characters  for  his  subject ;  but  he  had 
always  the  apology  that  he  really  believed  the  teaching 
both  of  the  philosopher  and  of  the  tragedian  to  have  an 
evil  influence  upon  public  morality.  There  was  a  certain 
earnestness  of  purpose  which  gave  respectability  to  the 
Aristophanic  comedy  in  spite  of  its  notorious  offences 
against  decency  and  good  manners. 

The  new  style  of  Comedy,  which  was  the  original  of 
that  of  Plautus  and  Terence,  and  which  developed  in 
later  times  into  what  we  call  Comedy  now,  did  not  per- 
haps fully  establish  itself  at  Athens  until  nearly  half  a 
century  after  the  death  of  Aristophanes.  But  the  germ 
of  it  may  be  found  in  the  later  tragedies  of  Euripides. 
His  heroes,  and  even  his  gods,  are  as  unlike  as  possible 
to  the  stately  figures  who  move  in  the  dramas  of 


4  THE  ANCIEXT  COMIC  DRAMA. 

.^Eschylus.  He  may  call  them  by  what  names  he 
pleases,  but  they  are  the  personages  of  ordinary  life. 
His  drunken  Hercules,  in  his  beautiful  drama  (tragedy 
it  can  hardly  be  called)  '  Alcestis,'  is  as  really  comic  as 
any  character  in  Menander's  plays.  His  unsparing 
satirist  Aristophanes,  in  his  '  Frogs,'  when  he  intro- 
duces ^Eschylusand  Euripides  pleading  before  Bacchus 
their  respective  claims  to  the  chair  of  tragedy,  makes 
it  one  of  the  charges  against  the  latter  that  he  had  low- 
ered the  whole  tone  of  tragedy  :  that  whereas  ^Eschylus 
had  left  the  ideal  men  of  the  drama  "  ^rand  figures, 
four  cubits  high,"  his  rival  had  reduced  them  to  the 
petty  level  of  everyday  life — poor  mean  gossips  of  the 
market-place.*  He  allows  Euripides  indeed  to  plead 
in  his  defence  that  while  the  elder  tragedian  had  given 
the  audience  nothing  but  high-flown  sentiment  and 
pompous  language  which  was  quite  above  their  compre- 
hension, he  had  brought  before  them  subjects  of  common 
household  interest  which  all  could  understand  and 
sympathise  with.  Both  accusation  and  defence  were 
true.  Euripides  had  violated  the  severe  simplicity  of 
classic  tragedy  :  but  he  had  founded  the  domestic 
drama. 

The  oligarchy  of  Rome  would  scarcely  have  permitted 
to  the  writers  for  the  stage  the  licence  of  personal  satire 
which  the  Athenian  democracy  not  only  bore  with, 
but;  encouraged  and  delighted  in.  The  risk  which 
Aristophanes  ran  from  the  political  partisans  of  Cleon 
would  have  been  as  nothing,  compared  with  the  perils 
of  the  comic  dramatist  who  should  have  presumed  to 

*  Frogs,  953,  910. 


INTRODUCTORY.  5 

take  the  same  liberty  with  any  members  of  the  "  nld 
great  houses  "  of  Rome.  There  had  IJCIMI  at  least  one 
example  of  this  in  the  fate  of  the  poet  Xievius.  ~\\^ 
know  very  little,  unfortunately,  of  what  his  dramas 
may  have  been  like,  for  in  his  case  we  have  remain- 
ing to  us  only  the  merest  fragments.  But  he  seems  to 
have  made  an  attempt  to  naturalise  at  Home  the  old 
Aristophanic  style  of  comedy.  A  plebeian  by  birth, 
and  probably  a  democratic  reformer  in  politics,  he  had 
ventured  upon  some  caricature  of,  or  satire  upon,  the 
members  of  the  great  family  who  bore  the  name  of 
Metellus,  and  who,  as  he  complained,  Avere  always 
holding  high  office,  fit  or  unfit.  "  It  is  fatality,  not 
merit,"  he  said,  in  a  verse  which  has  been  preserved, 
"  that  has  made  the  Metelli  always  consuls  of  Rome." 
The  family  or  their  friends  retorted  in  a  song  which 
they  chanted  in  the  streets,  the  burden  of  which  was, 
in  effect,  that  "  Naevius  would  find  the  Metelli  a  fatality 
to  him."  They  very  soon  got  him  imprisoned,  under 
the  stringent  libel  laws  of  Rome  :  and, — since  that  was 
not  enough  to  break  his  spirit — for  he  is  said,  after  his 
release,  to  have  written  comedies  which  were  equally 
distasteful  in  high  quarters, — they  succeeded  at  last  in 
driving  him  into  banishment.  We  hear  of  no  more 
ambition  on  the  part  of  Roman  dramatists  to  assume 
the  mantle  of  Aristophanes.  They  were  content  to  be 
disciples  in  the  later  school  of  Menander,  and  to  take 
as  the  subject  of  comedy  those  general  types  of  human 
nature  under  which  no  individual,  high  or  low,  was 
obliged  to  think  that  his  own  private  weaknesses  were 
attacked. 


CHAPTER    TT. 

MEN  AND  ER. 

MENANDER  was  born  at  Athens,  B.C.  342,  of  a  family 
in  which  dramatic  talent  was  in  some  degree  heredi- 
tary, for  his  uncle  Alexis  had  written  comedies  of 
some  repute.  It  would  appear  that  the  faculties  which 
make  the  successful  comic  writer  commonly  develop 
themselves  at  an  early  age  ;  for  Menander,  like  his 
predecessor  Aristophanes,  won  his  first  prize  for  comedy 
when  he  had  barely  reached  manhood  :  and  the  same 
may  be  remarked  as  to  the  early  and  rapid  success  of 
some  of  our  modern  humorists.*  But  this  youthful 
triumph  was  not  followed,  as  might  have  been  ex- 

*  Of  course  he  did  not  escape  the  charge  of  presumption 
and  precocity  from  older  candidates.  He  had  to  defend  him. 
self  on  this  occasion,  like  Pitt,  from  "the  atrocious  crime  of 
being  a  young  man."  His  defence,  if  we  may  trust  the  anec- 
dotist,  was  by  a  parable.  He  brought  upon  the  stage  some 
new-born  puppies,  and  had  them  thrown  into  a  vessel  of  water. 
Blind  and  weak  as  they  were,  they  instinctively  tried  to  swim. 
"Athenians,"  said  the  young  author,  "you  ask  how,  at  my 
years,  I  can  have  the  knowledge  of  life  which  is  required  in  the 
dramatist :  I  ask  you,  under  what  master  and  in  what  school 
did  these  creatures  learn  to  swim  ? " 


MENANDER.  7 

pected,  by  many  such  victories.  He  wrote  more  than  a 
hundred  comedies,  and  he  only  won  the  crown  eight 
times.  He  was  beaten  in  the  contest,  again  and  again, 
by  his  elder  rival  Philemon.  Of  this  writer's  plays 
nothing  but  the  merest  fragments  remain  to  us,  and  we 
are  thus  unable  to  form  any  opinion  as  to  the  justice  of 
the  popular  verdict.  But  critics  who  probably  had  the 
means  of  comparing  the  performances  of  both  authors, 
do  not  hesitate  to  impute  this  preference  of  Philemon 
to  Menander  by  the  contemporary  public  to  other 
causes  than  the  comparative  merits  of  the  rivals.  Quin- 
tilian  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  wonderful  genius 
of  Menander  robbed  all  his  contemporary  dramatists 
of  what  might  have  been  their  reputation,  and  that 
"  the  blaze  of  his  glory  threw  their  merits  into  the 
shade." 

The  honours  which  were  refused  to  the  poet  by  his 
fellow-citizens  were  liberally  offered  him  by  powerful 
patrons  elsewhere.  Demetrius  "  Poliorcetes  "  both  pro- 
tected him  when  lie  occupied  Athens  and  invited  him 
to  his  court  when  he  had  seated  himself  upon  the 
throne  of  Macedonia :  and  Ptolemy  Lagus,  when  he 
founded  his  celebrated  library  at  Alexandria,  would 
gladly  have  imported  the  living  dramatist  as  well  as 
the  manuscripts  of  his  predecessors'  works.  Menander 
refused  the  invitation,  though  the  king  offered  him 
"  all  the  money  in  the  world  ; "  but  whether  it  was, 
as  he  declared,  because  he  could  not  tear  himself 
from  a  certain  fair  lady  at  Athens,  or  because  he  found 
that  the  invitation  had  been  extended  to  his  rival 
Philemon,  may  not  be  so  certain. 

But  it  is  said  that  the  injustice  of  his  fellow-citizens 


8  THE   ANCIENT  COMIC  DRAMA. 

broke  the  poet's  heart.  In  his  bitter  mortification 
;it  one  undeserved  defeat  (so  goes  the  story)  he  threw 
himself  into  the  sea  off  the  wall  at  the  Piraeus,  and  was 
drowned,  while  yet  in  the  fulness  of  his  powers — not 
much  over  fifty  years  of  age.  The  authority  is  sus- 
picious, and  the  act  is  very  little  in  accordance  with 
the  philosophy  of  Menander,  as  we  gather  it  from  the 
remains  of  his  plays.  A  contemporary  and  probably  a 
personal  friend  of  Epicurus  (they  were  born  in  the 
same  year),  he  seems  to  have  adopted  heartily  the  easy- 
going optimism  of  that  much-abused  teacher.  To  take 
human  life  as  it  was ;  to  enjoy  its  pleasures,  and  to 
bear  its  evils  cheerfully,  as  unavoidable  :  not  to  expect 
too  much  from  others,  as  knowing  one's  own  infir- 
mities ;  to  remember  that  life  is  short,  and  therefore 
to  make  the  most  of  it  and  the  best  of  it,  not  to 
waste  it  in  vain  regrets  ; — this  is  the  philosophy  of 
Menander's  comedies,  which  on  these  points  are  oc- 
casionally only  too  didactic.  The  whole  secret  of  it  lies, 
he  says,  in  three  words — "  Thou  art  man." 

"  The  sum  of  all  philosophy  is  this — 
Thou  art  a  man  ;  than  whom  there  breathes  no  creature 
More  liable  to  sudden  rise  and  fall."  * 

This  is  the  principle  on  which,  by  the  mouth  of  his 
various  characters,  he  is  continually  excusing  human 
weaknesses,  and  protesting  against  the  unreasonable- 
ness of  mortal  regrets  and  expectations  : — 

"  Being  a  mortal,  ask  not  of  the  gods 
Escape  from  suffering  ;  ask  but  to  endure  ; 
For  if  thou  seekest  to  be  ever  free 

*  Meineke,  Menandri  Reliq.,  188. 


MEN  A  NDER.  9 

From  pain  and  evil,  then  thou  seekest  this, — 
To  be  a  god,  or  die."  * 

One  does  not  wonder  that  Horace,  when  he  shut  him- 
self up  in  his  country  villa  in  December,  to  escape 
from  the  noisy  riot  of  the  Saturnalia  at  Rome,  took 
with  him  into  his  retirement  a  copy  of  Menander  as 
well  as  of  Plato,  ii'o  doubt  he  read  and  appreciated 
the  philosopher ;  and  the  manuscript  looked  well  upon 
his  table  when  his  friends  called.  But  we  may  be 
sure  that  the  dramatist  was  his  favourite  companion. 
In  him  Horace  found  a  thoroughly  congenial  spirit ; 
and  we  shall  probably  never  know  how  fur  he  was 
indebted  to  him  for  his  turn  of  thought. 

Menander's  private  habits  seem  to  have  been  too  much 
those  of  an  Epicurean  in  the  lower  sense  of  the  term ; 
and  if  Phaedrus  is  to  be  trusted  in  the  sketch  which  he 
gives  of  him  in  a  couple  of  lines,  he  had  a  good  deal 
of  the  foppishness  not  uncommon  to  popular  authors. 
Phsedrus  describes  him  as  "  scented  with  delicate  per- 
fumes, wearing  the  fashionable  flowing  dress,  and 
walking  with  an  air  of  languor  and  affectation."  t 

It  is  possible,  indeed,  that  the  philosophic  and  didac- 
tic character  of  Menander's  comedies  may  have  been 
one  reason  why  they  failed  so  often  to  win  popular 
applause.  Horace  himself  must  have  been  the  poet  of 
the  court,  and  of  what  we  call  "  Society,"  rather  than 
of  the  million.  The  comedy  of  manners,  which  deals 
with  the  problems  of  domestic  life — and  such  is  the 
comedy  of  Menander— had  not  so  strong  an  attraction 

*  Meineke,  Menand.  Rel.,  203.  +  Fabul.,  T.  1. 


10  THE  ANCIENT  COMIC  DRAMA. 

for  the  multitude  as  the  uproarious  farce  which  formed 
so  large  an  ingredient  of  the  Old  Comedy.  So  far  as  we 
can  judge  from  the  mere  disjointed  fragments  which 
alone  have  survived,  there  was  very  little  of  broad  fun  or 
of  comic  situations  in  the  plays  of  Menander.  It  was 
in  the  finer  delineation  of  character,  as  is  admitted  by 
all  his  critics,  that  he  most  excelled.  He  had  studied 
carefully,  and  reproduced  successfully,  the  various 
phases  of  that  human  nature  which  was  the  Alpha  and 
Omega  in  his  philosophy.  The  saying  of  the  wise 
man  of  old — "  Know  thyself" — was  a  very  insufficient 
lesson,  he  considered,  for  the  dramatist. 

"  It  was  not,  after  all,  so  wisely  said, 
That  precept — '  Know  thyself ; '  I  reckon  it 
Of  more  advantage  to  know  other  men."  * 

How  real  the  characters  in  his  dramas  appeared  to  those 
who  had  the  best  means  of  judging  may  be  gathered 
from  the  terse  epigram  ascribed  to  the  grammarian 
Aristophanes,  the  librarian  of  Alexandria,  who  lived 
about  a  century  after  him : — 

"  O  Life,  and  O  Menander  !  speak,  and  say 
Which  copied  which  ?  or  nature,  or  the  play  ?" 

There  certainly  does  not  seem  to  have  been  that  variety 
in  the  characters  introduced  which  we  expect  and  find 
in  the  modern  drama.  But  life  itself  had  not  then  the 
variety  of  interest  which  it  has  now  :  and  the  sameness 
of  type  which  we  observe  in  the  persons  of  the  drama 
probably  existed  also  in  society.  It  must  be  re- 

*  Meineke,  Meuand.  R#L,  83. 


MENANDER.  11 

membered  also  that,  owing  to  the  immense  size  of 
the  theatres,  every  performer  wore  a  mask  in  which 
the  features  were  exaggerated,  just  as  he  wore  buskins 
which  increased  his  stature,  in  order  to  make  his  face 
and  figure  distinctly  visible  to  the  distaiit  rows  of  the 
audience.  These  masks  necessarily  presented  one  fixed 
expression  of  features;  they  could  not  possibly  be 
made  to  display  the  variable  shades  of  emotion  which 
a  real  comedian  knows  how  to  throw  into  his  face  ; 
nor  could  the  actor,  if  he  was  to  preserve  his  identity  for 
the  audience,  change  his  mask  together  with  his  mood 
from  scene  to  scene.  This  difficulty  would  naturally  limit 
the  dramatic  author's  sphere  of  invention :  he  we  mid  feel 
chat  he  had  to  confine  himself  to  certain  recognised 
generalities  of  character,  such  as  the  mask-moulder  could 
contrive  more  or  less  to  represent,  and  that  the  finer 
shades  of  distinction  which,  in  spite  of  so  much  that  is 
identical,  distinguish  man  from  man,  must  be  left  for 
the  descriptive  poet,  and  were  outside  of  the  province 
of  the  author  who  worked  for  the  stage.  The 
cold  severity  of  Greek  tragedy  did  not  suffer  much 
from  this  limitation  of  the  actor's  resources  :  the  level 
and  stately  declamation  of  the  text  might  be  accom- 
plished perhaps  as  well  with  a  mask  (which  was  even 
said  to  increase  the  volume  of  sound)  as  without  it. 
So  also,  in  the  Old  Comedy  of  Aristophanes  and  his 
contemporaries,  the  exaggerated  style  of  their  humour 
found  apt  expression  in  the  broad  grotesque  which  the 
mask-maker  and  property-man  supplied, — just  as  they 
do  now  in  our  burlesques  and  extravaganzas.  The 
delicate  'play  of  features  and  expression  which  are 
so  essential  to  the  due  impersonation  of  some  of  the 


12  THE  ANCIEN1    COMIC  DRAMA. 

most  original  characters  in  our  modern  drama  was 
plainly  impossible  to  an  actor  who  wore  a  mask  :  one 
might  as  reasonably  look  for  it  from  a  company  of 
Marionettes.  The  manufacturer  of  masks  for  the 
ancient  comic  drama  worked  according  to  fixed  rules, 
which  were  perfectly  well  understood  both  by  the 
performers  and  by  the  audience.  There  was  a  tolerably 
large  repertory  of  these  contrivances  always  at  the 
disposal  of  the  stage-manager  :  but  each  mask  had  its 
own  specific  character  ;  its  features  were  so  moulded  as 
to  be  typical  of  a  class.  We  are  told  with  great  par- 
ticularity that  about  the  period  during  which  these 
comedies  were  placed  upon  the  stage,  there  were  nine 
different  characters  of  masks  representing  old  men,  ten 
for  younger  characters,  and  seven  for  slaves.  Eor  the 
women,  three  varieties  were  considered  enough  for  the 
older  personages,  the  matrons  and  nurses  of  the  scene. 
The  young  ladies,  as  was  their  due,  were  better  pro- 
vided for  ;  no  less  than  fourteen  varieties  of  face  were 
kept  in  stock  for  them.  And  the  mask,  in  their  case — 
unlike  some  masks  which  are  still  worn  on  the  stage 
of  real  life — was  made  not  to  conceal  but  to  indicate 
the  character  of  the  wearer,  and  even  her  age.  There 
was  to  be  found,  in  the  theatrical  wardrobe,  the  face 
and  head-dress,  all  in  one,  which  denoted  "  the 
talkative  young  woman,"  and  the  "  modest  young 
woman  ;"  the  one  who  was  still  fairly  on  her  promotion, 
and  the  one  who  was  past  her  prime  ;  there  was  a 
special  mask  for  the  young  lady  "  with  the  hair,"  and 
one  still  more  peculiar,  the  "  lamp  "  head-dress,  as  it 
was  called,  for  the  young  lady  whose  hair  stood  up- 
right like  a  lamp.  There  was  the  head-dress  "  with 


MENANDER.  1:1 

the  gold  band,"  and  that  with  "  the  hand  of  many 
colours  ; "  and,  if  we  did  not  know  that  in  the  classical 
comedy,  as  on  our  own  stage  in  former  times,  even  the 
female  parts  were  taken  by  men,  we  might  have 
fancied  that  there  was  some  jealous  rivalry  as  to  the 
right  to  wear  these  latter  distinguished  costumes. 
The  advantage  of  the  system,  if  any,  was  this  :  that 
the  moment  the  performer  appeared  upon  the  scene, 
the  audience  had  the  key  to  the  character.* 

The  range  of  characters  which  were  available  for  the 
purposes  of  the  dramatist  was  limited  again  by  the 
nature  of  the  scenic  arrangements.  By  long  theatrical 
tradition,  intelligible  enough  amongst  a  people  who 
led  essentially  an  outdoor  life,  and  where  the  theatre 
itself  was,  up  to  a  comparatively  late  period,  open  to 
the  sky,  all  the  action  of  these  dramas  was  supposed 
to  take  place  in  the  open  air.  In  the  comedies  which 
we  are  now  considering,  the  scene  is  commonly  a  pub- 
lic street, — or  rather,  probably,  a  sort  of  "  place  "  or 
square  in  which  three  or  four  streets  met,  so  that  there 
was  (as  has  been  more  than  once  attempted  on  the  mo- 
dern stage)  a  virtual  separation  of  it  into  distinct  parts, 
very  convenient  in  many  ways  for  carrying  on  the  action 

*  Should  any  English  reader  be  inclined  to  smile,  with 
some  degree  of  superciliousness,  at  these  simple  contrivances 
of  the  earlier  drama,  let  him  remember  there  was  a  time  when  a 
provincial  actor  in  an  English  strolling  company  would  bor- 
row of  some  good-natured  squire  a  full-bottomed  wig  and  lace 
ruffles  in  which  to  perform  the  part  of — Cato  ;  without  which 
conventional  costume  it  was  thought  no  audience  could  recog- 
nise the  "noble  Roman."  George  Harding  tells  us  an 
amusing  story  of  the  Eton  amateurs  of  his  day  impressing  a 
cast-otf  wig  of  the  Vice-Provost's  for  the  purpose. 


14  THE  A  NCI  EXT  COMIC  DRAMA. 

of  the  piece.  A  party  corning  down  one  street  towards 
the  centre  of  the  stage  could  hold  a  separate  conversa- 
tion, and  be  quite  out  of  the  sight  of  another  party  in 
the  other  street,  while  both  were  equally  visible  and 
audible  to  the  spectators.  This  will  help  to  explain 
the  stage  directions  in  more  than  one  scene  in  the 
comedies  of  Plautus  and  Terence.  But  this  limitation 
of  the  locality  of  the  scene  limited  also  the  range  of 
characters.  These  were  usually  supposed  to  be  resi- 
dents in  the  neighbourhood,  and  occupants  of  some  of 
the  houses  in  the  street.  Practically,  they  will  be 
very  often  found  to  be  members  of  two  neighbouring 
families,  more  or  less  closely  connected,  whose  houses 
occupied  what  we  should  now  call  the  right  and  left 
wings  of  the  stage.  Occasionally  (as  in  the  '  Aulularia ' 
and  '  Mostellaria '  of  Plautus)  the  scene  changes  to  the 
inside  of  one  of  the  houses,  or  a  temple  which  stands 
close  by ;  but  such  scenes  are  quite  exceptional,  and 
in  those  cases  some  kind  of  stage  chamber  appears  to 
have  been  swung  round  by  machinery  to  the  front. 

For  these  reasons,  perhaps,  as  well  as  for  others, 
the  principal  characters  in  the  repertory  of  the 
"  New  "  Comedy  are  few,  and  broadly  marked.  They 
seem  to  have  occurred  over  and  over  again  with  but 
little  variation  in  almost  every  piece.  There  are 
the  fathers,  heads  of  families,  well-to-do  burghers, 
occupying  their  house  in  the  cit),  and  commonly 
having  a  farm  in  the  adjacent  country  besides,  but 
seldom  appearing  to  have  any  other  particular  occu- 
pation. Their  character  is  almost  always  one  of  two 
recognised  types, — either  stern  and  niggardly,  in  which 
case  they  are  duly  cheated  and  baffled  by  their  spend- 


MENANDER.  ]  o 

thrift  sons  and  their  accomplices  :  or  mild  and  easy, 
when  they  go  through  the  process  of  having  their 
purses  squeezed  with  less  resistance  and  less  suffering. 
There  is  the  respectable  mother  of  the  family,  who  is 
sometimes  the  terror  of  her  husband  and  sometimes 
tyrannised  over  by  him.  One  or  two  sons,  and  some- 
times a  daughter — to  which  number  the  household  of 
comedy  seems  limited — make  up  the  family  group. 
The  sons  are  young  men  about  town,  having  apparently 
nothing  to  do  but  to  amuse  themselves,  a  pursuit 
which  they  do  not  always  follow  after  the  most  re- 
putable fashion.  Then  there  are  the  slaves,  on  whom 
depends  in  very  great  measure  the  action  of  the  piece. 
It  is  very  remarkable  how  in  Greek  comedy,  and  in 
the  Roman  adaptations  from  it,  this  class  supplies 
not  only  the  broadly  comic  element,  but  the  wit 
of  the  dialogue,  and  the  fertility  of  expedient  which 
makes  the  interest  of  the  drama.  They  are  net 
brought  upon  the  stage  merely  to  amuse  us  by  their 
successful  roguery,  or  by  its  detection  and  consequent 
punishment,  by  their  propensity  to  gormandise  and 
their  drunken  antics, — this  kind  of  "low  comedy 
business  "  is  what  we  might  naturally  expect  of  them. 
But  in  witty  repartee,  and  often  in  practical  wisdom, 
they  are  represented  as  far  superior  to  their  masters. 
And  this  ability  of  character  is  quite  recognised  by  the 
masters  tbemselves.  They  are  intrusted,  like  Parmeno 
in  the  '  Eunuchus'  of  Terence,  with  the  care  of  the  sons 
of  the  house,  even  at  that  difficult  age  when  they  are 
growing  up  to  manhood,  during  the  father's  absence 
abroad  :  or  like  his  namesake  in  the  '  Plocium '  oT 
Menander,  and  Geta  in  the  '  Two  Brothers '  of  Terence, 


IG  THE  ANCIENT  COMIC  DRAMA. 

they  are  the  trusted  friend  and  mainstay  of  a  struggling 
family.  It  is  by  no  means  easy  to  explain  satisfac- 
torily this  anomalous  position.  The  slave  no  doubt 
in  many  cases,  owing  the  loss  of  his  personal  liberty 
to  the  fortunes  of  war,  being  either  a  captive  or  a 
captive's  child,  might,  although  a  foreigner,  be  of 
as  good  birth  and  hereditary  intellect  as  his  master. 
In  many  households  he  would  go  to  the  same 
school,  and  enjoy  the  same  training  in  many 
ways  as  the  young  heir  of  the  family  :  he  would 
be  taught  many  accomplishments,  because  the  more 
accomplished  he  was,  the  more  valuable  a  chattel  he 
became.  But  was  it  also  that  these  Athenian  citizens, 
from  whom  Menander  drew,  held  themselves  some- 
what above  the  common  practical  business  of  life — in 
short,  like  the  Easterns  in  the  matter  of  dancing, 
considered  that  they  "  paid  some  one  else  to  do  their 
thinking  for  them  "  in  such  matters  ?  The  witty  slave 
occupied  a  position  in  those  households  somewhat  akin 
to  the  king's  jester  in  late  times — allowed  to  use  a  free- 
dom which  would  not  have  been  suffered  from  those  of 
higher  rank,  but  limited  always  by  the  risk  of  condign 
personal  chastisement  if  he  ventured  too  far.  The 
household  slave  was  certainly  admitted  to  most  of  his 
master's  secrets  ;  admitted,  it  must  be  remembered, 
almost  of  necessity,  as  many  of  our  own  modern  servants 
are — a  condition  of  things  which  we  are  all  too  apt  to 
forget.  He  might  at  any  moment  by  his  ability  and 
fidelity  win,  as  so  many  did,  his  personal  freedom,  and 
became  from  that  moment  his  master's  friend  ;  not,  in- 
deed, upon  terms  of  perfect  equality,  but  on  a  much 
nearer  level  than  we  in  these  days  should  be  willing 


MENANDER.  17 

to  allow.  ~No  stronger  instance  of  this  need  be  sought 
than  that  of  Cicero's  freedman  Tiro,  between  whom  and 
his  master  we  find  existing  an  aifection  almost  fraternal. 
The  slave  who  had  gained  his  freedom  might  rise — for 
it  was  Terence's  own  case — to  be  a  successful  dramatist 
himself,  and  to  sit  down  at  table  with  such  men  as 
Scipio  and  Lselius.  The  anomaly  is  that  a  man 
who  stood  in  such  confidential  relations  to  his  master, 
and  with  such  possibilities  in  his  future,  should  feel 
himself  every  moment  liable,  at  that  master's  slightest 
caprice,  to  the  stocks  and  the  whip.  But  it  is  an 
anomaly  inherent  to  the  institution  of  slavery  itself ; 
and  no  worse  examples  of  it  need  be  sought  than  are 
to  be  found  in  the  annals  of  modern  slave  plantations. 
In  the  few  fragments  of  Menander  which  remain, 
to  us  we  find  the  poet  adopting,  as  to  the  slave's 
position,  a  much  higher  tone  than  we  might  have  ex- 
pected, and  which  is  very  remarkable  in  a  writer  who 
would  certainly  never  have  dreamed  of  the  abolition 
of  a  system  which  must  have  appeared  to  him  a  neces- 
sity of  civilisation.  It  is  a  tone,  be  it  said,  which  we 
do  not  find  in  his  Roman  imitators,  Plautus  or  Terence, 
He  plainly  feels  slavery  to  be  an  evil — a  degradation 
to  the  nature  of  man.  His  remedy  is  a  lofty  one — 
freedom  of  soul : — 

"  Live  as  a  free  man — and  it  makes  thee  free."  * 
The  young  men  are,  as  has  been  said,  usually  very 
much  of  the  same  type,  and  that  not  a  very   high 
one  :   hot-blooded  and  impulsive,  with  plenty  of  self- 
ish good-nature,   and   in   some   cases   a  capacity  for 

*  Meineke,  Menand.  ReL,  269. 
A.  C.  vol.  xvL  B 


18  THE  ANCIENT  COMIC  DRAMA. 

strong  and  disinterested  friendship.  "VVe  have  too 
little  opportunity  of  judging  what  Menander  made  of 
them  ;  but  in  Terence  they  have  commonly  the  re- 
deeming point  of  a  strong  affection  for  their  parents 
underlying  all  their  faults,  though  it  does  not  prevent 
them  from  intriguing  with  their  slaves  to  cheat  them 
in  order  to  the  gratification  of  their  own  passions  or 
extravagance.  Yet  their  genuine  repentance  when  de- 
tected, and  the  docility  with  which  they  usually  accept 
their  father's  arrangements  for  them  in  the  matter  of 
a  wife,  are  a  remarkable  proof  of  the  strength  of  the 
paternal  influence.  The  daughter  of  the  family  may  be 
said  (in  quite  a  literal  sense)  to  have  no  character  at 
all.  She  is  brought  up  in  something  stricter  than  even 
what  Dryden  calls  "  the  old  Elizabeth  way,  which  was 
for  maids  to  be  seen  and  not  heard  ; "  for  she  is  never 
seen  or  heard,  though  we  are  always  led  to  believe  that 
she  is  an  irreproachable  young  lady,  possessing  a  due 
amount  of  personal  charms,  and  with  a  comfortable 
dowry  ;  which  combined  attractions  are  quite  sufficient 
to  make  one  of  the  young  gentlemen  happy — some- 
times at  very  short  notice — in  the  last  scene  of  tj;c 
play.  But  it  was  not  etiquette  for  an  unmarric<i 
woman  at  Athens  to  make  her  appearance  in  the  publi< 
streets — and  in  the  streets,  for  the  reasons  already 
given,  the  action  of  the  piece  invariably  takes  place. 
Of  some  of  the  ladies  who  do  appear  on  the  stage  the 
same  remark  as  to  character  (in  a  different  sense)  might 
be  made ;  and  if  something  less  were  seen  and  heard 
of  them,  it  might  be  better. 

This   entire  absence  of  what  we  should  call  love- 
scenes,  places  these  dramas  at  an  enormous  disadvantage 


MENANDER.  19 

before  the  modern  reader.  Yet  in  one  direction,  a  great 
approach  to  modern  ways  of  thought  had  been  made 
in  this  New  Athenian  Comedy.  Love,  with  the 
dramatists  of  this  school,  is  no  longer  the  mere  animal 
passion  of  some  of  the  older  poets,  nor  yet  that  fatal  and 
irresistible  influence  which  we  see  overpowering  mind 
and  reason  in  the  Medea  of  Euripides,  or  in  the 
Dido  of  Virgil.  It  has  become,  in  Menander  and  his 
followers,  much  more  like  the  love  of  modern  romance. 
It  is  a  genuine  mutual  affection  between  the  sexes, 
not  always  well  regulated,  but  often  full  of  tender- 
ness, and  capable  of  great  constancy.  Still,  the  mo- 
dern romance  is  not  there.  It  was  very  well  for  ancient 
critics  to  say  that  Menander  was  emphatically  a  writer 
of  love-dramas — that  there  was  no  play  of  his  which 
had  not  a  love-story  in  the  plot :  and  it  is  true,  if  wo 
may  judge  from  the  Latin  adaptations,  that  his  come- 
dies usually  ended  in  marriage.  But  a  marriage  with 
a  bride  whom  the  audience  have  never  been  allowed 
to  see,  and  for  whose  charms  they  must  take  the  bride- 
groom's word,  has  not  a  very  vivid  interest  for  them. 
The  contrivances  by  which,  in  order  to  suit  what  were 
then  considered  the  proprieties,  the  fair  object  is  kept 
carefully  out  of  sight  while  the  interest  in  her  fortunes 
is  still  kept  up,  will  seem  to  an  English  reader  a 
striking  instance  of  misplaced  ingenuity. 

If,  however,  in  these  comedies  of  ancient  domestic 
life  we  miss  that  romance  of  feeling  which  forms  so 
important  an  element — if  it  may  not  rather  be  said  to 
be  of  the  very  essence — of  the  modern  drama,  we  escape 
altogether  from  one  style  of  plot  which  was  not  only  the 
reproach  of  our  old  English  comedy-writers,  but  is  still 


20  THE  ANCIENT  COMIC  DRAMA. 

too  common  a  resource  with  modern  writers  of  fiction, 
romantic  or  dramatic.  The  sanctities  of  married  life 
are  not  tampered  with  to  create  a  morbid  interest  for 
audience  or  reader.  The  husband  may  sometimes  be  a 
domestic  tyrant,  or  his  wife  a  scold,  and  their  matri- 
monial wrangles  are  not  unfrequently  produced  for  the 
amusement  of  the  audience ;  but  there  is  little  hint  of 
any  business  for  the  divorce  court.  The  morality  of 
these  comedies  is  lax  in  many  respects,  chiefly  because 
the  whole  law  of  morality  was  loAver  on  those  points 
(at  least  in  theory)  in  the  pagan  world  than  it  is  in  the 
Christian  :  but  the  tie  of  fidelity  between  Imsband  and 
wife  is  fully  recognised  and  regarded.  In  this  respect 
some  advance  had  been  made,  at  least  so  far  as  popular 
comedy  was  concerned,  since  the  time  of  Aristophanes. 
His  whole  tone  on  such  points  is  cynical  and  sneering  ; 
and  when  he  lashes  as  he  does  with  such  out-spoken 
severity  the  vices  of  the  sex,  it  seems  to  be  without  any 
consciousness  of  their  bearing  upon  domestic  happi- 
ness. The  wife,  in  his  days  at  least,  was  not  the 
companion  of  her  husband,  but  a  property  to  be  kept 
as  safe  as  might  be,  and  their  real  lives  lay  apart. 
Some  considerable  change  must  have  taken  place  in 
these  relations  at  the  time  when  Menander  wrote,  if 
we  may  judge  from  scattered  expressions  in  his  lost 
comedies.  He  is  not,  upon  the  whole,  complimentary 
to  marriage,  and  he  makes  capital  enough  out  of  its 
risks  and  annoyances  ;  he  does  not  think  (or  perhaps 
professes  not  to  think)  that  good  wives  are  common. 
"  Needs  must  that  in  a  wife  we  gain  an  evil, — 
Happy  is  he  who  therein  gains  the  least."* 

*  Meineke,  Menancl.  Eel.,  190. 


MENANDER.  21 

But,  if  a  really  good  wife  can  be  found,  he  admits 
with  the  wise  Hebrew  king  that  "  her  price  is  above 
rubies."  Verses  like  the  following,  salvage  from  the 
wreck  of  his  plays,  passed  into  proverbs  : — 

"  A  virtuous  woman  is  a  man's  salvation." 
"  A  good  wife  is  the  rudder  of  the  house." 

He  is  honest  enough,  too,  to  lay  the  fault  of  ill-assorted 
marriages  at  the  door  of  those  who  have  to  choose  in 
such  a  matter,  as  much  as  of  those  who  are  chosen ;  in 
this,  as  in  other  things,  he  recognises  a  certain  law  of 
supply  and  demand. 

"  What  boots  it  to  be  curious  as  to  lineage— 
Who  was  her  grandfather,  and  her  mother's  mother — 
Which  matters  nought  ?  while,  for  the  bride  herself, 
Her  whom  we  have  to  live  with, — what  she  is, 
In  mind  and  temper,  this  we  never  ask. 
They  bring  the  dowry  out,  and  count  it  down, 
Look  if  the  gold  be  good,  of  right  assay, — 
The  gold,  which  some  few  months  shall  see  the  end  of ; 
While  she  who  at  our  hearth  must  sit  through  life, 
We  make  no  trial  of,  put  to  no  proof, 
Before  we  take  her,  but  trust  all  to  chance."* 

The  gibes  which  he  launches  against  women  seem 
to  have  been  not  more  than  half  in  earnest.  He  pro- 
bably borrowed  the  tone  from  Euripides,  of  whom  he 
was  a  great  admirer,  and  whose  influence  may  be 
pretty  clearly  traced  in  the  style  and  sentiment  of  his 
comedies. 

We  usually  find,  then,  the  chief  parts  in  the  comedy 
filled  by  the  members  of  one  or  two  neighbouring 

*Meineke,  Menand.  Rel.,  189. 


22  THE  ANCIENT  COMIC  DRAMA. 

families.  Of  the  other  characters  who  are  introduced, 
two  of  the  most  common,  and  therefore,  we  must  sup- 
pose, the  most  popular,  are  the  Braggadocio  and  the 
Parasite.  The  former  is  usually  a  soldier  of  fortune 
who  has  served  in  the  partisan  wars  in  Asia,  under 
some  of  those  who  were  disputing  for  the  fragments  of 
Alexander's  empire ;  who  has  made  money  there,  and 
come  to  Athens — as  a  modern  successful  adventurer 
might  go  to  Paris — to  spend  it.  He  has  long  stories  to 
tell  of  his  remarkable  exploits  abroad,  which  no  one 
is  very  well  able  to  contradict,  and  to  which  those 
who  accept  his  dinners  are  obliged  to  listen  with  such 
patience  as  they  may.  His  bravery  consists  much 
more  in  words  than  deeds  :  he  thinks  that  his  repu- 
tation will  win  him  great  favour  from  the  ladies,  but 
on  this  point  he  commonly  finds  himself  very  much 
mistaken.  How  far  such  a  character  was  common  at 
Athens  in  Menander's  time,  we  cannot  say :  he  appears, 
with  variations,  in  at  least  five  of  his  comedies  of  which 
fragments  have  reached  us,  and  in  no  less  than  eight 
out  of  the  twenty  which  remain  to  us  of  Plautus.  He 
would  evidently  present  salient  points  for  the  farce- 
writer,  and  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  him  repro- 
duced, no  doubt  an  adaptation  from  these  earlier 
sketches,  as  the  "Spanish  Captain"  of  Italian  comedy, 
or  the  "  Derby  Captain  "  of  our  own.  He  is  the  Don 
Gaspard  of  Scarron's  '  Jodelet  Duelliste,'  Le  Capitaine 
Matamore  of  Corneille's  '  L'lllusion  Comique,'  and  the 
Bobadil  of  Jonson's  'Every  Man  in  his  Humour.'  In 
Spain  or  Italy  he  is  perhaps  more  in  his  natural  place 
— for  these  military  adventurers  were  not  uncommon  in 
the  Continental  wars  of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  cen- 


MEXANDER.  23 

turies — than  lie  is  in  the  plays  of  Plant  us  or  of  Terenco, 
who  transferred  him  bodily  from  their  Greek  original : 
for  the  Romans  themselves  were  not  likely  to  furnish 
examples  of  him,  and  no  hired  mercenary  would  have 
ventured  to  swagger  in  those  days  at  Rome.  To  a 
Roman  audience  this  could  only  have  been  one  of  those 
conventional  characters,  made  to  be  laughed  at,  which 
an  easy  public  is  very  often  willing  to  accept  from  an 
author's  hands.  He  is  sometimes  accompanied  by  the 
Parasite, who  is  content  to  eat  his  dinners  on  condition 
of  listening  to  his  military  reminiscences,  and  occasion- 
ally drawing  them  out  for  the  benefit  of  others, — act- 
ing, in  short,  generally  as  his  humble  foil  and  toady. 
This  is  a  character  almost  peculiar  to  the  comedy  of 
this  school,  and  which  has  not  found  its  way  much 
into  the  modern  drama.  In  the  Athens  of  Menander, 
.and  in  the  Rome  of  Plautus  and  Terence,  when  life 
was  altogether  more  in  public,  and  when  men  of  any 
moderate  position  seldom  dined  alone,  the  character, 
though  not  in  the  exaggerated  form  which  suited  the 
purpose  of  the  comic  dramatist,  appears  to  have  been 
sufficiently  common.  Athemeus,  from  whose  curious 
'  Table-Talk '  we  learn  so  much  about  the  social  life  of 
those  times,  notes  three  distinct  classes  of  the  Para- 
site. There  was  the  professed  talker — the  narrator  of 
anecdotes  and  sayer  of  good  things — who  was  in- 
vited to  "  make  sport "  for  the  guests  who  might  be  too 
grand  or  too  dull  to  amuse  each  other  ;  and  this  useful 
class  of  "  diner-out "  is  not  altogether  unknown  in 
modern  society.  This  variety  of  the  character  seems 
to  have  not  unfrequently  "  read  up  "  carefully  in  pre- 
paration for  the  display  of  the  evening,  as  modern 


24  THE  ANCIENT  COMIC  DRAMA. 

professors  of  tlie  art  of  conversation  Lave  teen  reported 
to  do.  "  I  will  go  in  and  have  a  look  at  my  common- 
place-books, and  learn  up  some  better  jokes,"  says 
Gelasimus  in  the  '  Stichus '  of  Plautus,  when  he  is 
afraid  of  being  superseded  by  some  new  pretenders. 
There  was,  again,  the  mere  toady  and  flatterer,  of 
whom  we  shall  see  a  specimen  presently  in  one  of  the 
fragments  of  Menander,  as  well  as  in  the  comedies  of 
Plautus ;  *  and  of  whom  we  have  some  historical  ex- 
amples fully  as  ludicrous  as  any  inventions  of  the  stage, 
if  the  biographers  of  Philip  and  Alexander  of  Macedon 
are  to  be  trusted.  We  are  told,  that  whenever  Kin" 

*       " 

Philip  ate  anything  sour  or  acid,  and  made  wry 
faces  at  it,  his  flatterer  Cleisophos  went  through  exactly 
the  same  grimaces ;  when  the  king  hurt  his  leg, 
Cleisophos  immediately  put  on  a  limp  ;  and  when  the 
king  lost  his  right  eye  by  the  arrow  at  Methone,  the 
courtier  appeared  next  morning  with  the  same  eye 
bandaged  up.  It  is  also  said  that  to  wear  the  head  a 
little  on  one  side  became  quite  the  fashion  in  the  court 
of  Alexander,  because  he  himself  had  a  slight  deformity 
of  the  kind.  Another  variety  of  the  parasite  was  the 
still  meaner  humble  companion,  who  carried  messages 
and  did  little  services  of  all  kinds,  sometimes  worse 
than  menial,  for  his  richer  patron. 

An  amusing  soliloquy  of  one  of  these  hungry  guests 
who  is  waiting  for  his  dinner  (having  possibly  found 
no  entertainer,  and  therefore  no  dinner  at  all,  the  day 
before)  has  been  preserved  for  us  by  Aulus  Gellius  out 
of  a  lost  comedy  which  he  attributes  to  Plautus, — 

*  See  p.  44. 


MENAXDER.       •  25 

'  The  Boeotian,' — founded  upon  one  of  the  same  name 
by  Menander: — 

"  The  gods  confound  the  man  who  first  invented 
This  measuring  time  by  hours  !    Confound  him,  too, 
Who  first  set  up  a  sun-dial — chopping  up 
My  day  into  these  miserable  slices ! 
When  I  was  young,  I  had  no  dial  but  appetite, 
The  very  best  and  truest  of  all  timepieces  ; 
When  that  said  'Eat,'  I  ate — if  I  could  get  it. 
But  now,  even  when  I've  the  chance  to  eat,  I  must  not, 

Unless  the  sun  be  willing  !  for  the  town 

} 

Is  grown  so  full  of  those  same  cursed  dials, 
That  more  than  half  the  population  starve."  * 

These  persons  are  represented,  of  course,  as  having 
not  only  the  habit  of  living  as  far  as  possible  at  other 
men's  expense,  but  as  bringing  an  insatiable  appetite 
with  them  to  their  entertainers'  tables — 

"  'Tis  not  to  gather  strength  he  eats,  but  wishes 
To  gather  strength  that  he  may  eat  the  more."  f 

Neither  host  nor  servants  are  sparing  in  their  gibes 
as  to  the  gormandising  propensities  of  this  class  of  self- 
invited  guests.  The  cook  in  '  The  Mensechmi '  of 
Plautus  is  ordered  to  provide  breakfast  for  three  : — 

Cook.  What  sort  of  three  ? 

Erotium.  Myself,  Mena3chmus,  and  his  Parasite. 
Cook.  Then  that  makes  ten.     I  count  the  parasite 
As  good  as  any  eight. 

Although  the  character  of  the  Parasite  is  a  direct 
importation  from  the  Greek  stage,  it  was  likely  to  be  a 
very  common  one  also  in  Roman  society.  The  rela- 

*  AuL  Cell.,  iii.  3.  f  Fragment  of  Pkutus. 


26  THE  ANCIENT  COMIC  DRAMA. 

tion  of  patron  and  client,  which  meets  us  everywhere 
in  the  Roman  city  life  of  those  days — when  the  great 
man  was  surrounded  with  his  crowds  of  hangers-on,  all 
more  or  less  dependent  upon  and  obsequious  to  him, 
and  often  eating  at  his  table — was  sure  to  breed  in 
plenty  that  kind  of  human  fungus. 

Among  the  remaining  characters  common  to  this 
Menandriaa  Comedy  we  meet  with  the  .waiting-maid, 
more  or  less  pert  and  forward — who,  although  a  slave, 
seems  to  have  had  considerable  liberty  of  tongue,  and 
who  maintains  her  ground  upon  the  modern  stage 
with  little  more  change  in  the  type  than  has  followed 
necessarily  with  the  changes  of  society.  There  is,  again, 
the  family  nurse,  garrulous  but  faithful ;  and  some- 
times we  have  another  of  the  household  in  the  persou 
of  the  family  cook.  Lastly,  there  is  the  hateful  slave- 
merchant,  the  most  repulsive  character  in  the  Greek 
and  Roman  drama,  and  upon  whose  ways  and  doings 
there  is  no  need  for  us  here  to  dwell. 

The  philosophy  of  Menander  has  been  spoken  of  as 
distinctly  of  an  Epicurean  character,  and  his  morality 
is  certainly  no  whit  higher  than  that  of  his  age  and 
times.  Yet  fragments  of  his  have  escaped  the  general 
wreck,  which  have  in  them  a  grave  melancholy  not 
usually  associated  in  our  ideas  with  the  teaching  of 
that  school,  and  which  have  led  a  modern  scholar,  than 
whom  no  one  understood  more  thoroughly  the  spirit  of 
Greek  literature,  to  remark  that  Menander  after  all 
seems  to  have  been  "  more  adapted  to  instruct  than 
to  entertain."  *  Such  a  fragment  is  the  following  : — 

*  Walter  Savage  Landor. 


MENANDER.  27 

"  If  thou  wouldst  know  thyself,  and  what  thou  art, 
Look  on  the  sepulchres  as  tliou  dost  pass  ; 
There  lie  within  the  bones  and  little  dust     . 
Of  mighty  kings  and  wisest  men  of  old  ; 
They  who  once  prided  them  on  birth  or  wealth, 
Or  glory  of  great  deeds,  or  beauteous  form  ; 
Yet  nought  of  these  might  stay  the  hand  of  Time. 
Look, — and  bethink  thee  thou  art  even  as  they."* 

« 

We  find  also  passages  quoted  as  his,  though  their 
genuineness  is  somewhat  doubtful,  which  breathe  a 
higher  tone  still.  The  sentiment  expressed  in  the  fol- 
lowing lines,  attributed  to  the  poet  by  Clement  of 
Alexandria,  is  almost  identical  with  that  of  the  grand 
passage  with  which  Persius  concludes  his  second 
Satire : — 

**  Trust  me,  my  Pamphilus,  if  any  think 
By  offering  hecatombs  of  bulls  or  goats, 
Or  any  other  creature, — or  with  vests 
Of  cloth  of  gold  or  purple  making  brave 
Their  images,  or  with  sheen  of  ivory, 
Or  graven  jewels  wrought  with  cunning  hand, — 
So  to  make  Heaven  well-pleased  with  him,  he  errs, 
And  hath  a  foolish  heart.     The  gods  have  need 
That  man  be  good  unto  his  fellow-men, 
No  unclean  liver  or  adulterer, 
Nor  thief  nor  murderer  from  the  lust  of  gain, 
Nay,  covet  not  so  much  as  a  needle's  thread, 
For  One  stands  by,  who  sees  and  watches  all."  f 

The  same  writer  has  quoted  another  line  as  from  the 
'Greek  dramatist,  referring  to  the  purification  required 

*  Menand.  EeL,  196.  t  Clem.  Alex.  Strom.,  v.  c.  14. 


28  THE  AXCIENT  COMIC  DRAMA. 

of  the  worshipper  of  the  gods,  which  is  a  close  parallel 
to  the  Christian  teaching : — 

"  He  is  well  cleansed  that  hath  his  conscience  clean." 

Another  father  of  the  Church  has  cited  a  terse 
apophthegm,  which  he  attributes  to  Menander,  as  an 
argument  to  show  the  folly  of  idolatry : — 

"  The  workman  still  is  greater  than  his  work."  *  . 

We  owe  the  loss  of  Menander's  plays  most  probably 
to  the  fierce  crusade  made  by  the  authorities  of  the 
early  Church  against  this  kind  of  heathen  literature. 
Yet  it  is  plain  that  this  feeling  was  not  shared  by  the 
ecclesiastical  writers  who  have  been  quoted  ;  and  it  is 
singular  that  we  have  one  sentence  of  his  embalmed 
in  the  writings  of  a  still  higher  authority— St  Paul : 

"  Evil  communications  corrupt  good  manners." 

A  manuscript  of  some  at  least  of  these  comedies  was 
said  to  have  been  long  preserved  in  the  library  of  the 
Patriarch  at  Constantinople,  but  it  seems  to  have 
escaped  the  search  of  modern  scholars,  and  has  pro- 
bably in  some  way  disappeared.t 

How  great  the  loss  has  been  to  the  literary  world 
cannot  be  measured,  though  something  may  be  guessed. 
It  may  be  said  of  him  as  was  said  of  our  own  Jeremy 
Taylor — "  His  very  dust  is  gold."  The  number  of 
single  verses  and  distiches  caught  up  from  his  plays 
which  passed  into  household  proverbs  show  how 
widely  his  writings  must  have  leavened  the  literary 

*  Justin  Mart.,  Apol.  i.  20.  t  See  Journ.  of  Educ.,  i.  133. 


MENANDER.  29 

taste  both  of  Athenians  and  Romans.  The  estima- 
tion in  which  he  was  held  by  those  who  had  access 
to  his  works  in  their  integrity  is  fully  justified  l.y 
what  we  can  trace  of  his  remains.  "  To  judge  of 
Menander  from  Terence  and  Plautus  is  easy  but 
dangerous,"  says  M.  Guizot ;  dangerous,  because  we 
cannot  tell  how  much  he  may  have  lost  in  the  process 
of  adaptation  to  the  Roman  stage.  Caesar  has  been 
thought  to  have  spoken  slightingly  of  Terence  when 
he  called  him  "a  half- Menander:"  but  the  Roman  poet 
in  all  likelihood  bore  no  such  proportion  to  his  great 
original. 


CHAPTER  III 

PLAUTUS. 

ALL  the  writers  of  Comedy  for  the  Roman  stage,  of 
whose  works  we  have  any  knowledge,  were  dh-ect  imi- 
tators of  Menander  and  his  school.  Plautus,  however, 
was  prohably  less  indebted  to  him  than  were  his  succes- 
sors, Caecilius,  Lavinius,  and  Terence.  Of  the  two  inter- 
mediate authors  we  know  very  little  ;  but  Plautus  and 
Terence  have  been  more  fortunate  in  securing  for  them- 
selves a  modern  audience.  Their  comedies  may  not  have 
been  really  better  worth  possessing  than  those  of  other 
writers  who  had  their  day  of  popularity  :  but  theirs 
alone  have  been  preserved,  and  it  is  from  them  that 
we  have  to  form  our  judgment  of  the  Comedy  of  Re- 
publican Rome. 

Titus  Maccius  Plautus — the  second  would  be  what 
we  should  call  his  surname,  and  the  last  simply  means 
"  flat-foot "  *  in  the  dialect  of  Umbria,  the  district  in 

*  Literary  tradition  in  some  quarters  asserted  that  in  one  of 
his  comedies  he  introduced  a  sketch — certainly  not  too  flattering 
— of  his  own  personal  appearance : 

"  A  red-h;ured  man,  with  round  protuberant  belly, 
Legs  with  stout  calves,  and  of  a  swart  complexion  : 
Large  head,  keen  eyes,  red  face,  and  monstrous  feet." 
— Pseudolus,  act  iv.  sc.  7. 


PLAUTUS.  31 

which  he  was  born, — was  a  man  of  humble  origin,  the 
sou,  according  to  some  authorities,  of  a  slave.  But  little 
is  known  with  any  certainty  on  these  points.  He  is  said 
to  have  made  money  in  trade,  and  to  have  lost  it  again  ; 
to  have  then  worked  as  a  stage  carpenter  or  machinist, 
and  so  perhaps  to  have  acquired  his  theatrical  taste. 
These  early  associations  are  taken  also,  by  some  critics, 
as  an  explanation  of  some  rudeness  and  coarseness  in  his 
plays ;  for  which,  however,  the  popular  taste  is  quite 
as  likely  to  have  been  accountable  as  any  peculiar 
tendencies  of  the  writer.  Like  that  marvel  of  dra- 
matic prolificness,  Lope  de  Vega,  who  quotes  him  as 
an  apology,  Plautus  wrote  for  the  people,  and  might 
have  pleaded,  as  the  Spaniard  did,  that  "  it  was  only 
fair  that  the  customers  should  be  served  with  what 
suited  their  taste."  The  masses  who  thronged 
the  Roman  theatres  had  not  the  fine  intellect  of  the 
Commons  of  Athens.  Aristophanes  could  never  have 
depended  upon  them  for  due  appreciation  of  his  double- 
edged  jests,  or  appealed  to  them  as  critical  judges  of 
humour.  The  less  keen  but  more  polished  dialogue  and 
didactic  moralising  of  Meuander  would  have  been  still 
less  attractive  to  such  an  audience  as  that  to  which 
Plautus  had  to  look  for  favour.  The  games  of  the  circus 
— the  wild-beast  fight  and  the  gladiators,  the  rope-dan 
cers,  the  merry-andrews,  and  the  posture-masters, — were 
more  to  their  taste  than  clever  intrigue  and  brilliant 
dialogue. 

Plautus — we  know  him  now  only  by  his  sobriquet — 
began  his  career  as  a  dramatist  B.C.  224.  He  continued 
to  write  for  the  stage,  almost  without  a  rival  in  popu- 
larity, until  his  death,  forty  years  later.  How  many 


32  THE  ROM  AX  COMIC  DRAMA. 

comedies  he  produced  during  this  long  service  of  the 
public  we  do  not  know :  twenty  remain  bearing  his 
name,  all  which  are  considered  to  be  genuine.  All, 
with  the  exception  probably  of  'Amphitryon,'  are 
taken  from  Greek  originals.  It  is  not  necessary  here 
to  give  a  list  of  their  titles ;  the  most  interesting  of 
them  will  be  noticed  in  their  order.  With  Greek 
characters,  Greek  names,  and  Greek  scenery,  he  gives 
us  undoubtedly  the  Roman  manners  of  his  day,  which 
are  illustrated  more  fully  in  his  pages  than  in  those  of 
the  more  refined  Terence.  Let  the  scene  of  the  drama 
lie  where  it  will,  we  are  in  the  streets  of  Rome  all  the 
while.  Athenians,  Thebans,  orEphesians,  his  dramatis 
personce  are  all  of  one  country,  just  as  they  speak  one 
language;  they  are  no  more  real  Greeks  than  Shak- 
speare's  Othello  is  a  Moor,  or  his  Proteus  a  "gentle- 
man of  Verona" — except  in  the  bill  of  the  play.  So 
little  attempt  does  he  make  to  keep  up  anything  like 
an  illusion  on  this  point,  that  he  even  speaks  of  "  tri- 
umvirs "  at  Thebes,  builds  a  "  Capitol "  at  Epidaurus, 
and  makes  his  characters  talk  about  "  living  like  those 
Greeks,"  and  "  drinking  like  Greeks,"  utterly  careless 
of  the  fact  that  they  are  supposed  to  be  Greeks  them- 
selves. He  is  as  independent  of  such  historical  and 
geographical  trifles  as  our  own  great  dramatist  when 
he  makes  Hector  quote  Aristotle,  or  gives  a  sea- coast 
to  Bohemia.  But  he  has  the  justification  which  all 
great  dramatists  would  fairly  plead;  that  his  characters, 
though  distinctly  national  in  colour,  are  in  a  wider 
sense  citizens  of  the  world  ;  they  speak,  in  whatever 
language,  the  sentiments  of  civilised  mankind. 

However  coarse  in  many  respects  the  matter  and 


PLAUTUS.  33 

style  of  Plautus  may  appear  to  us,  it  is  certain  that 
good  judges  amongst  those  who  were  more  nearly  his 
contemporaries  thought  very  highly  of  his  diction.  It 
was  said  of  him  by  vElius  Stolo  that  "  if  the  Muses 
ever  spoke  Latin,  it  would  be  the  Latin  of  Plautus." 
Perhaps  he  was  the  first  who  raised  conversational  Latin 
to  the  dignity  of  a  literary  style. 

His  plays  are  in  most  cases  introduced  by  a  prologue, 
spoken  sometimes  by  one  of  the  characters  in  the  play, 
and  sometimes  by  a  mythological  personage,  such  as 
Silenus  or  Arcturus.  The  prologue  generally  gives  an 
outline  of  the  plot,  and  this  has  been  objected  to  by 
some  critics  as  destroying  the  interest  of  the  action 
which  is  to  follow.  But  a  similar  practice  has  been 
adopted  of  late  years  in  our  own  theatres,  of  giving 
the  audience,  in  the  play-bill,  a  sketch  of  the  leading 
scenes  and  incidents;  and  this  is  generally  found  to  in- 
crease the  intelligent  enjoyment  of  the  play  itself.  The 
prologues  of  Plautus  frequently  also  contain  familiar  ap- 
peals on  the  part  of  the  manager  to  the  audience,  and 
give  us  a  good  deal  of  information  as  to  the  materials  of 
which  the  audience  was  composed.  The  mothers  are 
requested  to  leave  their  babies  at  home,  for  the  babies' 
sakes  as  well  as  for  the  sake  of  other  people ;  and  the 
children  who  are  in  the  theatre  are  begged  not  to  make 
a  noise.  The  slaves  are  desired  not  to  occupy  the  seats, 
which  are  not  intended  for  them,  but  to  be  content 
with  standing-room ;  protests  are  made  against  the 
system  of  claqueurs, — friends  of  some  favourite  actor, 
who  gave  their  applause  unfairly,  to  the  discredit  of 
others  :  and  the  wives  are  requested  not  to  interrupt 
the  performance  with  their  chatter,  and  so  annoy  their 

A.  c.  vol.  xvi.  o 


34        THE  ROMAN  COMIC  DRAMA. 

husbands  who  are  come  to  see  the  play.  Remarks  of 
this  kind,  addressed  to  the  "  house,"  are  not  confined, 
however,  to  the  prologue,  but  occur  here  and  there  in 
the  scene  itself ;  these  last  are  evident  relics  of  the 
earlier  days  of  comedy,  for  we  find  no  such  in  the  plays 
of  Terence. 


CHAPTER    IT. 

THE     COMEDIES    OF    PLAUTUS. 
I. — THE  THREE  SILVER  PIECES. 

THE  plot  of  this  little  comedy,  wliich  is  confessedly 
borrowed  from  the  Greek  of  Philemon,  and  is  called  in 
the  original  with  perhaps  more  propriety  "  The  Buried 
Treasure,"  is  simple  enough.  Charmides,  a  rich  citizen 
of  Athens,  has  been  half  ruined  by  an  extravagant  son. 
He  goes  abroad,  leaving  this  son  and  a  daughter  in 
charge  of  his  old  friend  Callicles,  begging  him  to  do 
what  he  can  to  keep  young  Lesbonicus  from  squander- 
ing the  little  that  is  left  of  the  family  property.  At  the 
same  time,  he  intrusts  his  friend  with  a  secret.  He  has 
buried  under  his  house  a  treasure — three  thousand  gold 
Philips.*  This,  even  if  things  come  to  the  worst,  will 
serve  to  provide  a  marriage  portion  for  his  daughter, 
in  the  event  of  his  not  living  to  return  to  Athens. 
Callicles  has  strivsn  in  vain  to  persuade  the  young  man 
to  mend  his  ways  ;  Lesbonicus  has  gone  on  in  the  same 
course  of  extravagance,  until  he  has  nothing  left  but  a 

*  Gold  coins 'struck  by  the  Macedonian  kings,  and  worth  about 
two  guineas  apiece. 


36  THE  COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

small  farm  outside  the  city,  and  the  house  in  which  he 
lives — and  where  the  treasure  is  buried.  This  liou.se 
at  last  he  offers  for  sale  :  and  Callicles  is  only  just  in 
time  to  buy  it  in  for  himself,  and  so  to  preserve  for 
his  absent  friend  the  precious  deposit. 

The  action  of  the  piece  is  introduced  by  a  short 
allegorical  '  Prologue,'  in  which  Luxury  introduces  her 
daughter  Poverty  into  the  house  of  the  prodigal,  and 
bids  her  take  possession  :  a  very  direct  mode  of  en- 
forcing its  moral  upon  the  audience.  This  moral,  how- 
ever, is  by  no  means  carried  out  with  the  same  distinct- 
ness in  the  catastrophe. 

So  much  of  the  story  is  told  at  the  opening  of  the 
play  by  Callicles  to  a  friend,  who  seems  to  have  called 
purposely  to  tell  him  some  disagreeable  truths — as  is 
the  recognised  duty  of  a  friend.  People  are  talking 
unpleasantly  about  his  conduct:  they  say  that  he  has 
been  winking  at  the  young  man's  extravagance,  and 
has  now  made  a  good  thing  of  it  by  buying  at  a  low 
price  the  house  which  he  is  obliged  to  sell.  Callicles 
listens  with  some  annoyance,  but  at  first  with  an 
obstinate  philosophy.  Can  he  do  nothing,  his  friend 
asks,  to  put  a  stop  to  these  evil  rumours  ? 

I  can, — and  I  can  not ;  'tis  even  so  ; 

As  to  their  saying  it, — that  I  cannot  help  ; 

I  can  take  care  they  have  no  cause  to  say  it. 

But,  on  his  old  friend  pressing  him,  he  yields  so  far  as 
to  intrust  him  with  the  whole  secret. 

A  suitor  now  appears  for  the  hand  of  the  young 
daughter  of  the  absent  Charmides.  It  is  Lysiteles,  a 
young  mau  of  great  wealth  and  noble  character,  the 


THE   Til  RUE  SILVER  PIECES.  37 

darling  of  an  indulgent  father,  who  consents,  though 
with  some  natural  unwillingness,  not  only  to  accept 
her  as  a  daughter-in-law  without  a  portion,  but  even  to 
go  in  person  and  request  the  consent  of  her  brother 
Lesbonicus,  who  is  known  to  be  as  proud  as  he  is  now 
poor,  and  who  is  very  likely  to  make  his  own  poverty 
an  objection  to  his  sister's  marrying  into  a  rich  family, 
though  the  lover  is  his  personal  friend.  The  father 
has  an  interview  with  him,  but  can  only  obtain  his 
consent  to  such  a  marriage  on  condition  that  his  friend 
will  accept  with  her  such  dowry  as  he  can  give — the 
single  farm  which  he  has  retained  in  his  own  possession 
out  of  all  the  family  estate,  and  from  which  his  faith- 
ful slave  Stasimus — the  classical  prototype  of  Scott's 
Caleb  Balderstone — is  contriving  to  extract  a  living  for 
his  young  master  and  himself.  This  honest  fellow  is 
present  during  part  of  the  interview,  and  is  horrified 
to  hear  the  prodigal  generosity  with  which  the  ruined 
heir  insists,  in  spite  of  all  the  other's  attempts  to 
decline  it,  upon  dowering  his  sister  with  the  last  re- 
mains of  his  estate.  At  last  he  draws  Philto — the 
suitor's  father — aside  on  some  pretence,  and  the  follow- 
ing dialogue  ensues : — 


Stasimus.  I  have  a  secret  for  your  ear,  sir — only  you  ; 
Don't  let  him  know  I  told  you. 

Philto.  You  may  trust  me. 

Stas.  By  all  that's  good  in  heaven  and  earth,  I  warn 

you, 

Don't  take  that  land — don't  let  your  son  set  foot  on  it — 
I'll  tell  you  why. 
Phil.  Well,— I  should  like  to  hear. 


38  THE  COMEDIES  01<    PLAUTUS. 

Stas.  Well,  to  begin  with — (confidentially)   the   oxen, 

when  we  plough  it, 

Invariably  drop  down  dead  in  the  fifth  furrow. 
Phil,  (laughing).     Stuff !  nonsense  ! 
Stas.  (getting  more  emphatic).    People  say  there's  devils 

in  it  ! 
The  grapes  turn  rotten  there  before  they're  ripe. 

Lesbonicus  (watching  their  conversation,  and  speaking 
to    himself).      He's    humbugging    our    friend 
there,  I'll  be  bound  ! 
'Tis  a  good  rascal,  though — he's  stanch  to  me. 

Stas.  Listen  again — in  the  very  best  harvest  seasons, 
You  get  from  it  three  times  less  than  what  you've  sown, 

Phil.  An  excellent  spot  to  sow  bad  habits  in  ! 
For  there  you're  sure  they  won't  spring  up  again. 

Stas.  There  never  was  yet  a  man  who  had  that  land, 
But  something  horrible  always  happened  to  him  ; 
Some  were  transported — some  died  prematurely — 
Some  hung  themselves  !  (pauses  to  watch  t/te  effect.)   And 
look  at  him,  now,  there — (motioning  towards 
his  master).     The  present  owner — what  is  he  1 
— a  bankrupt. 
Phil,  (pretending  to  believe  him).   Well,  heaven  deliver 

me  from  such  a  bargain ! 
Stas.  Amen    to    that ! — Ah  !    you  might  say  '  deliver 

me,' 

If  you  knew  all.     Why,  every  other  tree 
Is  blasted  there  by  lightning  ;  all  the  hogs 
Die  of  pneumonia :  all  the  sheep  are  scabbed  ; 
Lose  all  their  wool,  they  do,  till  they're  as  bare 
As  the  back  of  my  hand  is.     Why,  there's  not  a  nigger 
(And  they'll  stand  anything)  could  stand  the  climate  ; 
Die  in  six  months,  they  all  do,  of  autumn  fever. 

Phil,   (coolly).    Ah !    I  daresay.     But   our  Campanian 

fellows 
Are  much  more  hardy  than  the  niggers.    Still, 


THE   THREE  SILVER  PIECES.  39 

This  land,  if  it's  at  all  what  you  describe  it, 
Would  be  a  fine  place  for  a  penal  settlement, 
To  banish  rascals  to,  for  the  public  good. 

Stas.  'Tis  just  a  nest  of  horrors,  as  it  is  ; 
If  you  want  anything  bad, — there  you  may  find  it. 

Phil.  No  doubt ; — and  so  you  may  in  other  places. 

Stas.  Now  please  don't  let  him  know  I've   told   you 
this! 

Phil.  Oh — honour  bright !  I  hold  it  confidential. 

Stas.  Because,  in  fact,  you  see,  he's  very  anxious 
To  be  well  rid  of  it,  if  he  can  find  a  man 
That's  fool  enough  to  take  it. — You  perceive  ? 

Phil.  I  do  :  I  promise  you,  it  shan't  be  me. 

Philto  is  unwilling  either  to  accept  the  farm,  or  to  hurt 
the  feelings  of  Lesbonicus  by  the  refusal — he  will  leave 
the  two  young  friends,  he  says,  to  settle  that  matter 
between  them.  And  poor  old  Stasimus  is  quite  satis- 
fied that  his  pious  falsehood  has  saved  this  remnant 
of  the  family  property. 

Young  Lysiteles  is  as  reluctant  to  accept  the  offered 
marriage  portion  as  his  friend  is  determined,  for  his 
honour's  sake,  to  give  it :  and  the  struggle  between  the 
two  young  men,  which  almost  leads  to  a  quarrel,  gives 
occasion  to  a  fine  scene,  though  perhaps  somewhat  too 
wordy  for  our  English  taste.  Lysiteles  is  the  more  hurt 
at  his  friend's  obstinacy,  because  he  has  discovered  his 
intention  of  quitting  Athens,  now  that  his  patrimony 
is  all  gone,  and  taking  service  under  some  potentate 
in  the  East,  the  great  field  which  was  then  open  to 
young  men  of  spirit  and  enterprise.  Stasimus'  despair, 
when  he  too  learns  this  last  resolution  on  the  part  ot 
his  young  master,  is  highly  comic  :  he  will  not  desert 
him,  even  if  he  could,  but  he  has  no  taste  for  a  mill 


40  THE  COMEDIES  OF  PL  A  UTUS. 

tary  life — wearing  clumsy  boots,  and  carrying  a  heavy 
buckler,  and  a  pack  on  bis  shoulders. 

But  Callicles  has  heard  of  the  proposed  marriage, 
and  will  by  no  means  allow  his  absent  friend's  daugh- 
ter to  go  to  her  bridegroom  dowerless,  when  there  is 
money  stored  away  specially  for  that  object.  But  how 
is  it  to  be  done  without  discovering  to  the  public  the 
secret  of  the  buried  treasure,  which  is  sure  to  confirm 
the  suspicion  of  his  underhand  dealings  1  and  which 
treasure  if  the  young  spendthrift  once  conies  to  know 
of,  the  rest  of  it  will  very  soon  fullow  the  estate.  If 
Callicles  gives  the  money  as  out  of  his  own  pocket, 
people  will  only  say  that  he  was  now  doling  out  a  part 
of  some  larger  fund,  left  in  his  hands  in  trust,  and 
which  the  girl  and  her  brother  ought  to  have  had  long 
ago.  He  adopts  the  scheme  of  hiring  one  of  those  un- 
scrupulous characters  who  hung  about  the  law  courts 
at  Athens,  as  they  do  about  our  own,  ready  to  under- 
take any  business  however  questionable,  and  to  give 
evidence  to  any  effect  required — "  for  a  consideration." 
This  man  shall  pretend  to  have  just  landed  from  foreign 
parts,  and  to  have  brought  money  from  Charmides 
expressly  for  his  daughter's  marriage  portion.  The 
required  agent  is  soon  found,  and  his  services  engaged 
by  Callicles  for  the  "  Three  Silver  Pieces,"  which  gives 
the  name  to  the  play.  He  is  equipped  in  some  out- 
landish-looking costume,  hired  from  a  theatrical  ward- 
robe, and  knocks  ttt  the  door  of  Charmides'  house  (a 
small  apartment  in  which  is  still  occupied  by  his  son) 
as  though  just  arrived  from  sea.  But  at  the  door  ho 
meets  no  less  a  person  than  Charmides  himself,  who 
has  just  returned  from  his  long  absence,  has  noticed 


THE   THREE  SILVER  PIECES.  41 

this  strange-looking  personage  on  his  way  from  tLo 
harbour,  and  is  much  astonished  to  find  him  knocking 
at  his  own  door.  Still  more  surprised  is  he  to  hear 
that  he  is  inquiring  for  his  son  Leshonicus,  and  that 
he  is  bringing  him  a  letter  from  his  father.  The  scene 
between  the  pretended  messenger  and  the  returned 
traveller  whose  agent  he  professes  to  be, — the  man's 
astonishment  and  embarrassment  when  he  finds  that  IR- 
IS talking  to  Charmides  himself,  and  the  consummate 
effrontery  with  which  he  faces  the  situation  to  the  very 
last,  long  after  he  knows  he  is  detected,  is  one  of  the 
most  amusing  scenes  in  Plautus,  though  unfortunately 
too  long  for  insertion  here.  The  impostor  has  not  been 
prepared  for  any  kind  of  cross-examination,  and  has  even 
forgotten  the  name  of  Lesbonicus'  father,  from  whom  he 
asserts  that  he  brings  the  money.  His  efforts  to  recover 
this  name — which  he  says  he  has  unfortunately  "swal- 
lowed" in  his  hurry;  his  imaginary  description  of  Clmr- 
inides,  who  stands  before  him  in  person ;  the  account  he 
gives  of  his  travels  in  countries  he  has  never  seen, — are 
all  highly  farcical.  One  argument  in  proof  of  the  reality 
of  his  mission  he  advances  triumphantly — the  thou- 
sand gold  pieces  which  he  carries  with  him  ;  if  he  did 
not  know  Charmides  personally,  Avould  he  ever  have 
intrusted  him  with  the  money  ?  At  last  his  inquisitor 
announces  himself — "  I  am  Charmides — so  hand  me 
over  my  money."  The  other  is  staggered  for  the 
moment  :  "  Bless  my  life  !  "  he  says  to  himself — "  why, 
here's  a  greater  impostor  than  I  am  !  "  But  he  soon 
recovers  his  coolness.  "That's  all  very  well,"  he  replies; 
"  but  you  never  said  a  word  about  your  being  Char- 
mides until  I  told  you  I  had  the  gold.  You  are  only 


42  THE   COMEDIES  OF   PLAUTUS. 

Charmides  for  a  particular  purpose — and  that  Avon't  do." 
— "Well,  but  if  I  am  not  Charmides,"  says  the  father — 
not  very  cleverly — "who  am  II"  "  Nay,"  says  his  op- 
ponent— "  that's  your  business  ;  so  long  as  you  are  not 
the  person  I  don't  intend  you  to  be,  you  may  be  anything 
you  please."  As  he  is  shrewd  enough,  however,  to  dis- 
cover that  Charmides  is  the  person  whom  he  claims  to 
be,  and  as  the  latter  threatens  to  have  him  cudgelled 
if  he  does  not  leave  his  door,  he  makes  his  exit  at  last 
not  in  the  least  crestfallen,  and  congratulating  him- 
self that,  come  what  will,  he  has  safely  pocketed  the 
Three  Silver  Pieces  :  he  has  done  his  best,  he  declares 
(as  indeed  he  has),  to  earn  them  fairly,  and  can  only  go 
back  to  his  employers  and  tell  them  that  his  mission 
has  failed. 

The  first  person  who  meets  Charmides  on  his  return 
home  is  Stasimus.  He  has  been  drowning  his  dread 
of  a  military  life  in  the  wine-flagon,  and  has  reached 
the  sentimental  stage  of  intoxication.  His  maundering 
moralities  upon  the  wickedness  and  degeneracy  of  the 
present  age,  and  the  wickedness  of  the  world  in  general, 
and  his  sudden  recollection  that  while  he  is  thus  gene- 
ralising upon  questions  of  public  interest  his  own 
particular  back  is  in  great  danger,  for  having  loitered  at 
the  wine-shop,  are  admirably  given.  His  old  master  is 
all  the  while  standing  in  the  background,  listening  with 
much  amusement  to  his  soliloquy,  and  throwing  in  an 
occasional  remark  aside,  by  way  of  chorus.  When  at 
length  he  discovers  himself,  the  joy  of  the  faithful  old 
tippler  sobers  him  at  once,  and  he  proceeds  to  tell  his 
master  how  affairs  have  been  going  on  in  his  absence. 
Charmides  is  shocked  to  hear  of  the  continued  extrava- 


THE    THREE  SILVER   PIECES.  43 

gance  of  his  son,  of  his  sale  of  the  house,  and  the 
consequent  loss  of  the  buried  treasure  on  -which  he  had 
depended,  and  still  more  at  the  faithlessness  of  his 
friend, — who  has  not  only  taken  no  care  to  prevent 
this  catastrophe,  but  has  employed  his  knowledge  of 
the  secret  to  his  own  advantage  in  the  most  shameless 
manner,  by  becoming  the  purchaser  of  the  house. 

Of  course  such  misunderstanding  is  soon  cleared  up. 
The  father  hears  with  joy  of  his  daughter's  approach- 
ing marriage,  and  thanks  young  Lysiteles  warmly  for 
his  generous  conduct,  though  he  will  not  allow  him — 
especially  as  he  has  made  money  during  his  absence 
abroad — to  take  into  his  house  a  portionless  bride. 
But  the  young  man  has  a  favour  to  ask  of  much  more 
importance  :  it  is  that  Charmides  will  overlook  and 
forgive  the  extravagance  of  his  dear  friend,  his  son, — 
who  will,  he  assures  him,  do  better  in  future.  Some- 
what reluctantly  the  father  consents — he  can  refuse 
nothing  at  such  a  moment,  and  to  so  generous  a 
petitioner.  His  judgment  upon  the  offender  forms  a 
characteristic  ending  to  the  piece. 

CJwtrm.  If  you'll  reform,  my  old  friend  Charicles 
Here  offers  you  his  daughter — a  good  girl ; 
Say,  will  you  marry  her  ? 

Legion,  (eagerly).  I  will,  dear  father  ! 

I  will — and  any  one  else  besides,  to  please  you. 

Chwm.  Nay — one's  enough :  though  I  am  angry  with  ye, 
I'll  not  inflict  a  double  chastisement ; 
That  were  too  hard. 

Callicles  (lauyhiny).  Nay,  scarcely,  for  hi.*  sins — 
A  hundred  wives  at  once  would  serve  him  ri^lit.* 

*  This  is  the  only  comedy  of  Plautus  which  has  been  presented 
by  Westminster  scholars  of  late  years.  When  it  was  acted  in 


44  THE   COME  1)1  US   OP    PLAUTUS. 


II. — THE    BRAGGADOCIO. 

The  hero — if  lie  can  be  so  called  who  is  the  very 
opposite  of  a  hero — in  this  comedy  is  one  of  those 
swaggering  soldiers  of  fortune  who  have  already  been 
briefly  described.  His  name,  which  is  a  swagger  in 
itself,  is  Pyrgopolinices — "  Tower  of  Victory."  He  is 
in  the  pay  of  Seleucus,  for  whom  he  is  at  present  re- 
cruiting ;  but  he  has  also  served,  by  his  own  account — 

"  On  the  fur-famed  Gorgonidonian  plains, 
Where  the  great  Bumbomachides  commanded — 
Cly tomestoridy sarchides's  son."  * 

He  is  attended  by  his  obsequious  toady  Artotrogus — 
"  Bread-devourer  " — who  flatters  his  vanity  and  swears 

1860,  the  humorous  modern  Latin  Epilogue  which  now  always 
follows  the  play  (and  which  is  really  a  short  farce  in  itself)  took 
an  especially  happy  turn.  A  project  was  then  on  foot  for  remov- 
ing the  School  to  a  different  site,  and  Lesbonicus  is  introduced 
in  this  epilogue  as  offering  to  sell  the  old  College  premises  ; 
while  "College  John,"  as  the  scholars'  official  is  always  called,  in 
the  character  of  the  slave  Stasimus,  endeavours  to  prevent  the 
sale  by  enlarging  upon  the  horrors  of  the  Thames  water  and  the 
squalor  of  Tothill  Fields.  The,  negotiation  is  stopped  by  the 
entrance  of  the  Ghost  of  Dr  Busby,  who  informs  them  of  a 
treasure  which  he  had  buried  under  the  old  foundations.  They 
proceed  eagerly  to  dig,  and  the  treasure  proves  to  be — a  gigantic 
EOD  !  which  is  exhumed  and  displayed  in  triumph  to  the  audi- 
ence. This  is,  the  old  Master  declares,  the  real  key  to  honours — 
the  "golden  bough"  of  classic  fable — 

"  Aurea  virga  tibi  est,  portas  quse  pandit  lionorum." 

*  We  need  not  go  far  to  seek  the  original  of  the  opening  lines 
of  '  Bom  bastes  Furioso,'  where  the  hero  asks — 
"  Aldibarontiphoskifornio, 
How  left  you  Chrononhotonthologos  ? " 


THE  BRAGGADOCIO.  45 

to  the  truth,  of  all  his  bragging  stories — "  maintaining 
his  teeth,"  as  he  says,  "at  the  expense  of  his  ears." 
The  Captain's  stories  are  of  such  an  outrageously  lying 
description  as  to  he  somewhat  too  improbable  fur  the 
subject  of  legitimate  comedy,  and  we  can  only  suppose 
that  in  this  kind  of  fun  the  taste  of  a  Iloman  au- 
dience preferred  a  strong  flavour.  He  affects  to  believe 
that  not  only  do  all  the  men  dread  his  prowess,  but 
that  all  the  women  are  charmed  with  his  person  :  and 
his  companion  and  flatterer  does  his  best  to  persuade 
him  that  it  is  so. 

Artotrogus.  You  saw  those  girls  that  stopped  me  yester- 
day ? 

Pyrgopolinices.  What  did  they  say  ? 

Art.  Why,  when  you  passed,  they  asked  me — 

"  What,  is  the  great  Achilles  here  ? " — I  answered, 
"  No — it's  his  brother."     Then  says  t'other  one — 
"  Troth,  he  is  handsome  !     What  a  noble  man  ! 
What  splendid  hair  !  " 

Pyrg.  Now,  did  they  really  say  so  ? 

Art.  They  did  indeed,  and  begged  me,  both  of  them, 
To  make  you  take  a  walk  again  to-day, 
That  they  might  get  another  sight  of  you. 

Pyrg.  (sighing  complacently}.  ;Tis  a  great  nuisance  being 
so  very  handsome !  * 

This  hero  gentleman  has  just  carried  off  from 
Athens — by  force,  however,  and  not  by  the  influence 
of  his  personal  attractions — a  young  lady  who  is  an 
object  of  tender  interest  to  a  gentleman  of  that  city, 

*So  Le  Caoitan  Matamore,  in  Corneille's  '  L' Illusion 
Comique' — 

"  Ciel  qui  sais  comme  qnoi  j'en  suia  persecute  ! 
Un  peu  plus  de  repos  avec  moins  de  beaute." 


46  THE   COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

who  is  at  the  time  gone  upon  a  voyage  to  I^aupactus. 
His  faithful  slave  Palestrio  takes  ship  to  follow  him 
thither,  but  on  his  way  falls  into  the  hands  of  pirates, 
by  whom  he  is  sold,  and,  as  it  happens,  taken  to 
Ephesus  and  there  purchased  by  Pyrgopolinices.  He 
finds  the  lady  shut  up  in  half-willing  durance  in  the 
Captain's  house,  and  at  once  writes  information  of  the 
fact  to  her  Athenian  lover,  his  master  Pleusicles,  who 
sails  at  once  for  Ephesus.  On  his  arrival,  he  finds 
that  an  old  friend  of  the  family  occupies  the  adjoining 
house  :  a  jolly  old  bachelor,  of  thorough  Epicurean 
tastes  and  habits,  and  quite  ready  to  forward  a  lover's 
stratagem.  By  his  good-natured  connivance  a  door  is 
broken  through  his  house  into  the  women's  side  of  his 
neighbour's  mansion,  by  which  Pleusicles  is  enabled  to 
hold  communication  with  the  object  of  his  affections. 
But  a  servant  of  the  Captain's,  who  has  been  specially 
charged  to  keep  an  eye  upon  the  lady,  happens  to  be 
running  over  the  roof  of  the  two  houses  in  the  pursuit 
of  an  escaped  monkey,  looks  down  through  a  skylight 
with  the  curiosity  of  his  class,  and  is  a  witness  of  one 
of  these  stolen  interviews  between  the  lovers.  How 
Philocomasium  (for  that  is  the  lady's  long  Greek  name*) 
lias  found  her  way  into  the  house  next  door  is  what 
he  does  not  understand ;  but  there  she  is,  and  he  is 
determined  to  tell  the  Captain.  First,  however,  he 

*  These  Greek  female  names  are  anything  but  euphonious  to 
English  ears.  But  we  must  remember  that  what  seems  to  us  a 
harsh  termination  was  softened  away  in  the  Latin  pronuncia- 
tion, and  that  in  its  Greek  form  it  was  a  diminutive  ;  so  that 
names  ending  in  "  ion  "  conveyed  to  their  ear  a  pet  sound,  as  in 
our  Nellie,  Bessie,  &c. 


THE  BRAGGADOCIO.  47 

takes  into  his  counsels  his  new  fellow-servant,  Palestrio, 
and  confides  to  him  his  discovery.  Palestrio  tries  to 
persuade  him  that  his  eyes  have  deceived  him,  hut 
finding  him  ohstinately  convinced  of  their  accuracy, 
invents  a  story  of  a  twin-sister,  who  hy  a  curious 
coincidence  has  just  come  to  Ephesus  and  taken  the 
house  next  door,  where  she  allows  a  lover  of  her  own 
to  visit  her.  The  chief  fun  of  the  piece,  which  is 
somewhat  of  a  childish  character,  consists  in  the  in- 
genuity with  which  Philocomasium,  with  the  aid  of 
Palestrio,  contrives  hy  a  change  of  costume  to  play 
the  double  part  of  herself  and  the  imaginary  twin- 
sister;  much  to  the  hewilderment  of  the  Captain's 
watchful  and  suspicious  retainer,  who  is  ignorant  of 
the  existence  of  the  secret  passage  hy  which  at  her 
pleasure  she  flits  from  house  to  house. 

The  catastrophe  is  brought  about  by  the  absorbing 
vanity  of  the  military  hero.  He  is  persuaded  by 
the  ready  Palestrio  that  a  lady  in  the  neighbourhood, 
of  great  charms  and  accomplishments,  has  fallen  vio- 
lently in  love  with  him,  and  that  if  only  out  of  charity 
it  behoves  him  to  have  compassion  on  her.  She  has  a 
jealous  husband,  and  dare  not  invite  him  to  her  house, 
but  asks  to  be  allowed  to  call  upon  him  at  his  own. 
In  order  to  have  the  coast  quite  clear,  he  sends  oil' 
Philocomasium  for  a  while,  in  charge  of  the  trusty 
Palestrio,  who  willingly  undertakes  to  escort  her — 
with  her  mother  and  the  twin-sister,  as  he  thinks  — 
rnally  with  her  lover  Pleusicles,  who,  in  the  guise  of  a 
shipowner,  carries  her  off  to  Athens.  The  fate  of 
the  Captain  is  that  of  Falstalf,  in  the  '•  Merry  Wives 
of  Windsor.'  As  soon  as  the  love-stricken  lady — who  is 


48  THE  COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

only  a  lady's-maid  employed  for  the  occasion — is  ascer- 
tained to  be  paying  her  expected  visit  to  this  pro- 
fessional Adonis,  his  bachelor  neighbour,  from  next 
door,  enters  in  the  character  of  the  jealous  husband, 
with  a  band  of  stout  slaves  and  beats  him  to  a  jelly. 

III. — THE    HAUNTED    HOUSE    (MO8TBLLARIA). 

The  Latin  name  of  this  play  means  something  like 
"The  Goblin;"  but  perhaps  the  English  title  here 
given  to  it  will  better  express  the  nature  of  the  plot. 
A  worthy  citizen  of  Athens  has  been  away  for  three 
years  on  a  trading  voyage  to  Egypt,  and  during  his 
absence  his  son  Philolaches,  though  a  young  man  of 
amiable  disposition,  has  gone  altogether  wrong,  kept 
very  dissolute  and  extravagant  company,  and  spent  the 
greatest  part  of  his  father's  money.  In  this  he  has  been 
aided  and  abetted  by  Tranio,  his  valet  and  factotum, 
— one  of  those  amusing  rascals  who  seem  to  take  delight 
in  encouraging  their  young  masters  in  such  things, 
though  they  feel  it  is  at  the  risk  of  their  own  backs. 

The  youth  is  just  sitting  down  to  supper  with  some 
of  his  friends  (one  of  whom,  has  come  to  the  party 
already  drunk),  when  Tranio,  who  has  been  down  to 
the  harbour  to  buy  fish,  conies  in  with  the  startling  in- 
telligence of  the  father'*  return  from  sea ;  he  has  just 
got  a  glimpse  of  him  as  he  landed.  Philolaches  feels 
that  the  evil  day  has  come  upon  him  at  last.  His  fiist 
idea  naturally  is  to  get  rid  of  his  friends,  have  the 
supper-table  cleared  away,  and  make  things  look  at 
least  as  quiet  and  respectable  as  possible.  But  his 
friend  Callidainates  is  by  this  time  so  very  drunk  and 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE.  49 

incapable  that  it  is  impossible  to  hope  to  get  him  safely 
off  the  premises  in  time;  especially  as,  in  his  drunken 
independence,  the  only  notice  he  takes  of  the  now.s  is 
first  to  "  hope  the  old  gentleman's  very  well ; "  secondly, 
to  advise  his  son,  if  he  doesn't  "want  him,  to  "  send 
him  back  again  ; "  and,  lastly,  to  offer  to  fight  him,  then 
and  there. 

Philolaches.  Who's  that  asleep  there  ?    Wake  him  up, 

do,  Delphium  ! 
Delphium.  Callidamates !  Callidamates — wake !  (shaking 

him.} 
Call-  (looking  up  drowsily).     I  am  awake — all  right. 

Pass  us  the  bottle. 

Ddph.  Oh,  do  awake,  pray  do  !     His  father's  come — 
From  abroad,  you  know  !      (Shakes  him  again.) 

Call,  (just  opening  his  eyes}.     All  right — hope  's  pretty 

well. 
Phil,  (angrily).    He's  well  enough,  you  ass! — I'm  very 

bad. 

Call.  Bad  !  why, — what 's  'matter  ? 
Phil.  Do  get  up,  I  say, 

And  go — my  father's  come. 

Call,  (drowsily).  Father's  come,  is  he  ? 

Tell  him — go   back  again.       What    the   deuce  's    want 

here? 
Phil,  (in  despair).  What  shall  I  do  ?    Zounds  !  he'll  be 

here  in  a  minute, 

And  find  this  drunken  ass  here  in  my  company, 
And  all  the  rest  of  ye.     And  I've  no  time — 
Beginning  to  dig  a  well  when  you're  dying  of  thirst, — 
That's  what  I'm  doing  ;  just- beginning  to  think 
What  I'm  to  do,  and  here's  my  father  come  ! 

Tranio  (looking  at  Call.)    He's  put  his  head  down  and 

gone  to  sleep  again  ! 
A.  c.  vol.  xvi.  D 


50  TIIE  COMEDIES  OF  PLAVTUS. 

Phil.  Will  you  get  up?  (sJiakiny  him.}  I  say, — my  father's 

here  ! 
Call,  (jumping  up).  Father  here  ?  where  ?    Give  me  my 

slippers,  somebody  ! 

My  sword,  there ! — polish  the  old  gentleman  off  in  no  time 

— Act  ii.  sc.  2. 

But  Tranio  proves  equal  to  the  occasion.  He  desires 
them  all  to  keep  quiet  where  they  are,  to  let  him  lock 
the  house  up  and  take  the  key  of  the  street-door,  and 
go  to  meet  his  elder  master  with  a  story  which  he  has 
ready  for  him.  The  good  citizen  makes  his  appearance 
in  the  next  scene,  congratulating  himself  heartily  on 
having  escaped  the  perils  of  this  his  first — and,  as  he 
is  determined  it  shall  be,  his  last — sea  voyage. 

Enter  THEUROPIDES — slaves  following  with  his  lur/gage. 
TRANIO  looking  round  a  corner,  and  listening. 

Theu.  I  do  return  you  hearty  thanks,  good  Neptune, 
For  letting  me  out  of  your  clutches  safe  and  sound, 
Though  scarce  alive  ;  but  if  from  this  time  forward 
You  catch  me  setting  foot  in  your  dominions, 
I  give  you  leave — free  leave — that  very  instant, 
To  do  with  me — what  you've  just  tried  to  do. 
A  vaunt !  Anathema  !  I  do  abjure  ye 
From  this  same  day  !  (looking  back  towards  the  /tarloar, 

and  shaking  his  fist).   I've  trusted  to  ye  once, 
But  never  will  I  run  such  risk  again. 

Tran.  (aside).   Zounds,  Neptune,   you've  just  made  a 

great  mistake — 
Lost  such  a  charming  opportunity  ! 

Theu.  Three  years  I've  been  in  Egypt :  here  I  am, 
Come  home  at  last  ! — How  glad  they'll  be  to  see  me  ! 

Tran.  (aside).   There's  only  one  we  had  been  more  glad 

to  see — 
The  man  who  brought  us  word  that  you  were  drowned. 


TI1E  HAUNTED  HOUSE.  51 

[THEUROPIDES  advances  to  his  mvn  door,  at  wliidi  he 
knocks,  and  looks  up  at  the  closed  windov.'S.  TraHui 
comes  forward. 

Tran.  Who's  this  ?  who  ventures  near  this  house  of  ours  ? 

TJieu.  Why,  this  is  my  man  Tranio  ! 

Tran.  O,  dear  master, 

O,  welcome  home  !  I  am  so  glad  to  see  you — 
Are  you  quite  well  1 

Tlieu-  Quite,  as  you  see  (knocks  again). 

Tran.  Thank  heavens  ! 

Thf.u.  But  you, — are  ye  all  mad  ? 

Tran.  Why  so  ? 

Tlieu.  Because 

Here  you  are  walking  about,  and  nobody  in. 
(Knocks  and  kicks  at  the  door.}    Not  a  soul  seems  to  hear. 

Will  nobody  open  1  (Kicks  again.} 
I  shall  kick  the  door  down  presently. 

Tran.  (shuddering  and  shrieking}.     O — O — Oh  ! 
Don't  ye  do  that,  dear  master — don't  ye,  don't  ye  ! 

—  Act  ii.  sc.  2. 

Then  Tranio  begins  his  story.  The  house  is  haunted. 
There  is  a  ghost  there,  of  a  man  who  was  murdered 
in  it  hy  the  last  owner  for  the  sake  of  his  gold,  and 
buried  under  the  floor.  This  ghost  had  come  to 
young  Philolaches  in  his  sleep,  nearly  frightened  him 
out  of  his  senses,  and  warned  him  to  quit  his  pre- 
mises at  once.  Pluto  would  not  admit  him  into  the 
Shades,  he  said,  because  he  had  not  been  properly 
buried,  and  so  he  was  obliged  to  live  in  this  house,  and 
he  wanted  it  all  to  himself.  So  they  had  shut  it  up, 
Tranio  tells  the  father,  and  left  the  ghost  in  possession  ; 
and,  for  the.  present,  his  son  is  gone  into  the  country. 
Just  in  the  agony  of  the  tale,  a  noise  is  heard  inside 


52  THE  COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

— the  party  there  are  not  keeping  so  quiet  as  they 
ought. 

Tran.   (pretending  to  be  frightened,  and  catching  his 

master  by  the  arm.) 
Hush-sh  !     (Listening.) 

Then,  (trembling).     Eh  !  what  was  it  ? 

Tran.  (looking  aghast  at   Theu.)     Was  it  him,  d'ye 

think  ? 
(Listening  at  the  key-hole.)  I  heard  a  knockiiig. 

Then.  Eh  !  my  blood  runs  cold  ! 

Are  the  dead  men  coming  from  Acheron  to  fetch  me  ? 
Tran.  (aside).    Those  fools  will  spoil  it  all,  if  they're 

not  quiet. 

Theu.  What  are  you  saying  to  yourself,  sir — eh  ? 
Tran.    Go  from  the   door,  sir,  pray  —  run,  do,  I  beg 

you  ! 
Then,  (looking  round  in  terror).  Where  shall  I  run  to  ? 

why  don't  you  run  yourself  'I 
Tran.  (solemnly).  Well — I've  no  fear — I  keep  an  honest 

conscience. 
Callidamates   (inside).  Hallo  there,  Tranio  !     (Theuro- 

pides  runs  off".) 
Tran.  (going  close  to  the  door,  and  whispering).  Don't 

call  me,  you  fool  ! 
(Aloud,  as  to  the  ghost.)  Don't  threaten  me — it  wasn't  / 

kicked  the  door. 
Then,   (putting  his  head  round  the  corner).    0   clear ! 

what  is  it  ?  why  do  you  shake  so,  Tranio  ? 
Tran.  (looking  round).  Was  it  you  called  me  ? — Well, 

so  help  us  heaven, 

I  thought  it  was  the  dead  man  scolding  me 
For  making  all  that  rapping  at  his  door. 
But  why  do  you  stand  there  ?  why  don't  you  do 
What  I  just  told  you  ? 

Then,  (clasping  his  hands).  0  dear  !  what  was  that  ? 


THE   HAUNTED  HOUSE.  53 

Tran.  Run,  run  !  don't  look  behind  you — and  cover  your 

head  up  ! 

[THEUROPIDES  runs  off  with  his  docile  ow  his  head. 

— Act  ii.  sc.  2. 

There  may  not  be  very  much  wit  in  the  scene,  but 
it  is  a  fair  specimen  of  the  style  in  which  Plautus 
seems  to  have  excelled.  It  is  full  of  btutle  and  spirit, 
and  would  act,  as  is  the  case  with  so  many  of  his 
scenes,  far  better  than  it  reads.  If  any  reader  will  im- 
agine the  two  characters  in  the  hands  of  say  Mr  Keeley 
and  Mr  Buckstone,  he  will  perhaps  admit  that  it  would 
be  sufficiently  laughable  even  if  it  were  put  exactly  as 
it  is  upon  the  stage  of  a  modern  minor  theatre. 

The  "  Ghost "  is  left,  for  the  present,  in  undisturbed 
possession.  But  Tranio's  plan  is  nearly  frustrated  at 
the  outset ;  for,  as  he  is  following  his  master  down  the 
street,  they  meet  a  money-lender  to  whom  the  son  is 
indebted,  and  who  is  come  to  demand  his  interest. 
The  old  gentleman  overhears  the  conversation  between 
the  creditor  and  Tranio,  who  vainly  tries  to  prevent 
him  from  bawling  out  his  complaints  of  non-payment. 
He  succeeds,  however,  in  persuading  the  father  that 
his  son  has  only  been  borrowing  in  order  to  pay  the 
deposit-money  upon  the  purchase  of  a  house  (which 
he  has  been  driven  to  buy  in  consequence  of  the 
Ghost's  occupation  of  the  old  one),  and  which  is,  as  he 
assures  him,  a  most  excellent  bargain.  Theuropides 
is  naturally  anxious  to  see  the  new  house  at  once  ; 
and  Tranio,  almost  in  despair,  declares  that  it  is  that  of 
their  next-door  neighbour,  Simo,  whom  he  sees  just 
coming  out  of  his  door  on  his  way  to  the  Forum. 
Tranio  goes  up  to  this  person  and  requests  permission 


JH  THE   COMEDIES  OF   PLAUTUS. 

for  his  master  to  look  over  the  house,  which  he  wishes 
to  copy,  as  a  model  of  admirable  contrivance,  in  some 
new  buildings  which  he  is  about  to  make  on  his  own 
ground.  The  owner,  much  flattered,  begs  them  to 
walk  over  it  "just  as  though  it  were  their  own  ;"  an 
expression  which  rather  amuses  Theuropides,  as  he  is 
about  to  make  it  his  own  in  reality  by  paying  the  rest 
of  the  purchase-money.  Tranio  adroitly  whispers  to 
him  not  to  say  a  word  about  the  sale,  "  from  motives  of 
delicacy  :"  poor  Simo,  he  assures  him,  has  been  obliged 
to  part  with  his  family  property  owing  to  reduced  cir- 
cumstances, and  the  whole  transaction  is  naturally  a 
sore  subject  to  him.  Theuropides  takes  the  hint  at 
once,  praising  his  servant  at  the  same  time  for  his 
thought  fulness  and  good  feeling.  He  is  charmed  with 
the  house,  with  the  terms  of  the  purchase,  and  with 
the  business-like  habits  of  his  excellent  son. 

But  the  father's  dream  is  speedily  dispelled.  He 
meets  in  the  street,  near  his  own  door,  a  slave  of  the 
young  gentleman  who  is  at  this  moment  sleeping  off 
his  debauch  in  his  son's  apartments,  and  who.has  come, 
in  obedience  to  the  prudent  orders  issued  beforehand 
upon  such  occasions,  to  convey  his  master  home. 
Theuropides  would  fain  persuade  him  that  there  is  some 
mistake  ;  he  must  have  come  to  the  wrong  house  ;  this 
has  been  shut  up  and  unoccupied  for  some  time  ;  and 
his  son  Philolaches  is  quite  unlikely  to  keep  the  kind 
of  company  to  which  this  roysterer  belongs.  But  the 
slave  knows  his  business  better,  and  in  defence  of  his 
own  assertions  tears  the  veil  somewhat  rudely  from 
the  old  gentleman's  eyes.  If  he  could  be  supposed  to 
have  any  doubts  remaining,  they  are  removed  by  a 


THE  HAUNTED  HOUSE.  55 

second  interview  with  his  neighbour  Simo,  who  laughs 
at  the  notion  of  his  house  having  been  sold  without 
himself  being  aware  of  it.  It  only  remains  for  the 
deluded  father  to  take  vengeance  on  Tranio,  and  this 
he  will  set  about  at  once.  One  favour  he  will  ask  of 
Simo — "  Lend  me  a  couple  of  stout  slaves,  and  a  good 
whip  or  two  ;" — and,  thus  provided,  he  goes  in  quest  of 
the  culprit. 

Tranio  discovers  that  all  is  lost  except  his  spirit. 
That  still  keeps  up  :  and  he  appears  to  have  propped 
it  with  an  extra  cup  or  two.  His  soliloquy,  in  the 
hands  of  a  good  actor,  would  no  doubt  be  effective. 
He  has  succeeded  in  getting  the  revellers  out  of  the 
house  before  the  angry  father  comes  into  it ;  but  they 
have  now  lost  all  faith  in  him  as  an  adviser,  and  what 
step ,  he  is  to  take  next  is  by  no  means  clear  even  to 
himself. 

TRANIO  (solvx). 

The  man  who  loses  heart  when  things  go  crooked, 

In  my  opinion,  he's  not  worth  a  rap — 

What  a  "  rap  "  means,  now,  blest  if  I  can  tell ! 

Well — when  the  master  bid  me  fetch  the  young  one — 

Out  of  the  country  (laughs  to  himself),  ha,  ha  !     Well,  I 

went — 

Not  into  the  country — to  the  garden-gate  ; 
And  brought  out  the  whole  lot  of  'em — male  and  female. 
When  I  had  thus  safely  withdrawn  my  troops 
Out  of  their  state  of  siege,  I  called  a  council — 
A  council  of  war,  you  know — of  my  fellow-rascals; 
And  their  very  first  vote  was  to  turn  me  out  of  it. 
So  I  called  another  council — of  myself; 
And  I  am  doing — what  I  understand 


56  THE  COMEDIES   OF  PLAUTUS. 

Most  people  do  in  awkward  circumstances — 
Make  'em  as  much  more  awkward  as  they  can. 

— Act  v.  sc.  1. 

His  master  comes  to  look  for  him,  followed  by 
two  slaves  carrying  whips  and  fetters,  whom  he  keeps 
in  hiding  for  the  present  in  the  background  ;  but 
Tranio,  quite  aware  of  what  is  in  store  for  him,  takes 
refuge  at  the  family  altar,  and  will  listen  to  no  per- 
suasions to  come  away.  From  this  vantage-ground 
he  holds  an  argument  with  his  master ;  persuades 
him  that  his  prodigal  son  has  done  nothing  out  of 
the  way — only  what  other  young  men  of  spirit  do  ; 
and  when  Theuropides  vents  his  wrath  against  sucli  a 
shameful  piece  of  deception  in  a  slave,  gravely  advises 
him  to  hold  his  tongue  at  all  events  on  that  point. 
With  his  grey  hairs,  he  surely  ought  to  have  been 
wiser ;  if  people  once  come  to  know  how  he  has 
allowed  himself  to  be  duped,  they  will  infallibly  work 
him  into  a  plot  for  the  next  new  comedy. 

Tranio  gets  off  at  last,  by  the  intercession  of  Callida- 
mates,  who  has  sobered  himself  sufficiently  to  come  for- 
ward and  express  repentance  on  the  part  of  his  young 
friend,  and  to  entreat  that  all  may  be  forgotten  and 
forgiven ;  offering,  handsomely  enough,  to  pay  off  out 
of  his  own  pocket  the  little  debt  to  the  money-lender. 
Tranio  assures  his  master  that  he  will  not  lose  much 
by  forgiving  him  this  time — the  whipping  which  he  is 
longing  to  give  now  need  only  be  a  pleasure  deferred, 
inasmuch  as  he  is  quite  certain  to  do  something  to 
deserve  one  to-morrow.  Which  very  characteristic 
witticism  brings  down  the  curtain. 

Upon  this  comedy  Kegnard,  who  perhaps  ranks  next 


THE  SHIPWRECK.  57 

to  Moliere  of  the  French  comic  dramatists,  foumle<l 
his  play,  in  one  act,  of  '  Le  lie-tour  Imprevu  ; '  and 
Fielding's  'Intriguing  Chambermaid'  is  little  more 
than  a  translation  of  it.  But  Dunlop  remarks  that 
neither  the  French  nor  the  English  adapters  have 
availed  themselves  of  the  hint  which  Plautus  left  for 
them,  of  a  telling  scene  in  which  the  previous  occupant 
of  the  "  Haunted  House "  might  be  charged  by  the 
excited  father  with  the  murder  of  his  imaginary  guest. 

IV. THE    SHIPWRECK    (RUDENs). 

This  is  a  play  of  a  different  character  in  many  re- 
spects, and  comes  nearer  to  what  we  should  call  a  melo- 
dramatic spectacle  than  anything  else.  The  Latin  title 
is  simply  "  The  Eope  " — given  to  it  because  the  rope 
of  a  fisherman's  net  is  an  important  instrument  in  the 
denouement.  But  the  whole  action  turns  upon  a  ship- 
wreck, and  this  is  the  title  preferred  by  some  English 
authorities. 

The  prt  ;;ue,  which  is  in  a  higher  strain  than  Plau- 
tus commonly  aspires  to,  is  spoken  in  the  character  of 
Arcturus, — the  constellation  whose  rising  and  setting 
was  supposed  to  have  very  much  to  do  with  storms. 
The  costume  in  which  he  appears  is  evidently  brilliant 
and  characteristic. 

Of  his  high  realm,  who  rules  the  earth  and  sea 

And  all  mankind,  a  citizen  am  I. 

Lo,  as  you  see,  a  bright  and  shining  star, 

Revolving  ever  in  unfailing  course 

Here  and  in  heaven  :  Arcturus  am  I  hight. 

By  night  I  shine  in  heaven,  amidst  the  gods  ; 


58  THE  COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

I  walk  unseen  witli  men  on  earth  by  day. 
So,  too,  do  other  stars  step  from  their  spheres, 
Down  to  this  lower  world  ;  so  willeth  Jove, 
Ruler  of  gods  and  men  ;  he  sends  us  forth 
Each  on  our  several  paths  throughout  all  lands, 
To  note  the  ways  of  men,  and  all  they  do  ;  * 
It'  they  be  just  and  pious  ;  if  their  wealth. 
Be  well  employed,  or  squandered  harmfully  ; 
Who  in  a  false  suit  use  false  witnesses  ; 
Who  by  a  perjured  oath  forswear  their  debts  ;  — 
Their  names  do  we  record  and  bear  to  Jove. 
So  learns  He  day  by  day  what  ill  is  wrought 
By  men  below  ;  who  seek  to  gain  their  cause 
By  perjury,  who  wrest  the  law  to  wrong ; 
Jove's  court  of  high  appeal  rehears  the  plaint, 
And  mulcts  them  tenfold  for  the  unjust  decree. 
In  separate  tablets  doth  he  note  the  good. 
And  though  the  wicked  in  their  hearts  have  said, 
He  can  be  soothed  with  gifts  and  sacrifice, 
They  lose  their  pains  and  cost,  for  that  the  god 
Accepts  no  offering  from  a  perjured  hand. 

After  this  fine  exordium,  so  unlike  the  ordinary  tone 
of  the  writer  that  we  may  be  sure  he  is  here  translat- 
ing from  a  great  original,  the  prologue  goes  on  to  set 
forth  the  story  of  the  piece.  The  speaker  gives  the 
audience  some  description  of  the  opening  scene,  and  a 
key  to  the  characters.  It  is  the  tradition  of  the  com- 

*  The  same  idea  occurs  in  a  well-known  passage  hi  Homer: — 
"  Gods  in  the  garb  of  strangers  to  and  fro 
Wander  the  cities,  and  men's  ways  discern  ; 
Yea,  through  the  wide  earth  in  all  shapes  they  go, 
Change'!,  yet  the  same,  and  with  their  own  eyes  learc 
How  live  the  sacred  laws,  who  hold  them,  and  who  spurn." 

Odyss.  xvii.  485  (Worsley's  Transl.) 


THE   SHIPWRECK.  59 

mentators,  and  the  wording  of  the  prologue  corroborates 
it,  that  the  mounting  of  this  piece,  both  in  scenery  and 
machinery,  was  very  costly  and  elaborate.  It  opens, 
like  Shakspeare's  '  Tempest,'  with  a  storm — or  rather 
on  the  morning  after.*  The  sea  forms  the  background; 
on  one  side  is  the  city  of  Gyrene  in  the  distance,  on  the 
other,  a  temple  of  Venus,  with  a  cottage  near.  This 
cottage  is  the  residence  of  Deemones,  once  a  citizen  of 
Athens,  but  who,  having  lost  his  property  and  met 
with  other  troubles,  has  left  his  native  country  and 
settled  down  here  in  retirement.  He  and  his  slaves 
are  come  out  to  look  to  the  repairs  of  their  cottage, 
which  has  suffered  by  the  storm.  A  boat  appears 
struggling  through  the  waves  in  the  distance,  which, 
as  it  gets  nearer,  is  seen  to  contain  two  girls,  who  after 
great  danger  (described  by  one  of  the  slaves,  who  is 
watching,  in  a  passage  which  a  good  actor  would  no 
doubt  make  sufficiently  effective)  make  good  their  land- 
ing among  the  rocks,  and  meet  at  last  upon  the  stage, 
each  having  thought  the  other  lost.  One  of  them  is 
Palaestra :  a  free-born  girl  of  Athens,  but  stolen  and 
sold,  as  she  tells  us,  in  her  infancy.  Pleusidippus,  a 
young  Athenian,  had  seen  her  at  Gyrene,  fallen  violent- 
ly in  love  with  her,  and  made  proposals  to  the  slave 
merchant  for  her  ransom.  But  that  worthy  individual, 
thinking  that  he  could  make  a  better  bargain  for  such 
wares  in  Sicily,  had  just  set  sail  for  that  island,  carry- 
ing Palaestra  and  her  fellow-captives  with  him,  when 
the  whole  party  are  wrecked  here  on  the  coast,  just 
going  out  of  harbour. 

*  Possibly  the  storm  was  represented  on  the  stage  during  the 
delivery  of  the  prologue,  before  the  action  of  the  piece  began. 


60  THE  COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

The  two  girls,  drenched  as  they  are,  take  refuge  in 
the  Teraple  of  Venus,  where  they  ask  the  protection 
of  the  Priestess.  That  good  lady  is  the  very  model  of 
an  ecclesiastical  red-tapist.  Though  they  tell  their  sad 
story,  she  objects  that  they  ought  to  have  come  in  the 
proper  garb  of  supplicants  —  in  a  white  robe,  and 
bringing  with  them  a  victim  ;  and  is  hardly  satisfied 
with  poor  Palaestra's  explanation  of  the  great  difficulty 
which  a  young  woman  who  had  narrowly  escaped 
drowning  herself  would  find  in  carrying  a  white  dress 
and  a  fat  lamb  with  her. 

Labrax,  the  slave-dealer,  whom  every  one  hoped  had 
been  drowned  according  to  his  deserts,  has  also  escaped 
from  the  wreck  and  got  ashore.  Not  without  the  loss, 
however,  of  all  his  money,  which  has  gone  to  the 
bottom,  and  with  it  a  small  case  of  jewellery,  family 
tokens  belonging  to  Palaestra,  of  which  he  had  obtained 
possession.  He  hears  that  the  two  girls  who  are  his 
property  are  hidden  in  the  temple,  and  proceeds  to  drag 
them  thence  by  force.  He  is  met  there,  however,  by  a 
servant  of  young  Pleusidippus,  who  is  in  search  of  his 
master,  and  who  runs  to  Deemones's  cottage  for  help. 
The  owner  comes  out  with  two  stout  slaves,  rescues 
Palaestra  and  her  companion,  and  leaves  Labrax  in 
custody,  the  slaves  standing  over  him  with  cudgels, 
until  the  case  can  be  investigated.  Pleusidippus  soon 
arrives  upon  the  scene,  his  servant  having  hurried  to 
inform  him  of  the  state  of  affairs  —  that  his  dear 
Palaestra  has  escaped  from  the  wreck,  and  taken 
refuge  in  the  temple,  from  which  Labrax  would  have 
dragged  her  but  tor  the  timely  interference  of  a  very 
worthy  old  gentleman.  The  young  man  hauls  the 


THE    SHIPWRECK.  Gl 

slave-dealer  off,  with  very  little  ceremony,  "before  the 
nearest  magistrate,  to  answer  hoth  for  Lis  breach  of  con- 
tract and  his  attempt  at  sacrilege.  And  with  this 
scene  ends  the  third  act  of  the  drama. 

Then  there  is  an  interval  of  time  before  the  com- 
mencement of  the  fourth  act.  Gripus,  one  of  Deemones's 
slaves,  has  been  out  fishing.  He  has  taken  no  fish ; 
but  has  had  a  haul  which  will  prove,  he  hopes,  to  be  of 
more  importance.  He  has  brought  up  in  his  net  a 
heavy  wallet,  and  feels  certain  that  it  contains  gold ; 
enough,  no  doubt,  to  purchase  his  freedom,  and  to 
make  him  a  rich  man  for  the  rest  of  his  life  besides. 
His  soliloquy,  as  to  what  he  will  do  with  all  his  riches, 
reminds  us  not  a  little  of  the  dream  of  Alnaschar. 

Now,  this  shall  be  my  plan — I'm  quite  determined  : 
I'll  do  it  cunningly ;  I'll  go  to  my  master, 
With  just  a  little  money  from  time  to  time, 
To  buy  my  freedom  :  then,  when  I  am  free, 
I'll  buy  a  farm — I'll  build  a  house — I'll  have 
A  great  many  slaves.     Then  I  shall  make  a  fortune 
By  my  big  merchant-ships.     I  shall  be  a  prince, 
And  talk  to  princes.     Then  I'll  build  a  yacht, 
Just  for  a  fancy,  and  like  Stratonicus 
Sail  round  the  seaport  towns.*    When  my  renown 
Spreads  far  and  wide,  then — then,  I'll  found  a  city  ; 
I'll  call  it  "  Gripe,"  in  memory  of  my  name 
And  noble  acts  ;  I'll  found  an  empire  there. 
I  do  resolve  great  things  within  this  breast  (striking  his 
chest) ; 

*  Stratonicus  was  treasurer  to  Philip  and  Alexander,  and 
probably  thought  himself  a  greater  man  than  either  of  his 
masters.  The  allusion  to  Alexandria  in  "Gripe  "  is  obvious. 


62  THE   COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

But  for  the  present,  I  must  hide  my  windfall. 

(Takes  his  breakfast  out  of  his  scrip,  and  looks  at  it.) 
But  more's  the  pity  that  so  great  a  man 
Must  for  to-day  have  such  a  sorry  breakfast ! 

— Act  iv.  sc.  2. 

Before  he  has  time  to  hide  his  booty,  Trachalio,  the 
slave  of  Pleusidippus,  who  lias  been  watching  all 
Gri pus's  proceedings,  comes  up,  and  wants  to  claim 
half-shares  in  the  contents.  The  dialogue  between  the 
two  has  some  amusing  -points,  though  it  is  rather  too 
much  spun  out  for  modern  taste.  Trachalio  declares 
that  he  knows  the  person  to  whom  the  wallet  formerly 
belonged ;  Gripus  replies  that  he  knows  to  whom  it 
belongs  now,  which  is  of  nuuh  more  importance — it 
belongs  to  him.  All  that  he  catches  belongs  to  him, 
clearly ;  nobody  ever  disputed  it  before.  Trachalio  argues 
that  this  is  not  a  fish.  It  is  a  fish,  declares  Gripus , 
"  all's  fish  that  comes  to  the  net  "—using  our  pro-- 
verb in  almost  so  many  words.  This  sort  of  fish 
doesn't  grow  in  the  sea,  says  the  other.  Gripus  de- 
clares that  it  does — only  the  species,  he  is  sorry  to  say, 
is  very  seldom  caught.  He  is  a  fisherman,  and  knows 
a  good  deal  more  about  fish,  he  should  hope,  than  a 
landsman.  Trachalio  protests  it  is  with  him  a  matter 
of  conscience  :  since  he  has  seen  the  \vallet  fished  up, 
unless  he  goes  and  tells  the  owner,  he  shall  be  as  great 
a  thief  as  Gripus ;  but  he  is  willing  to  share  that  re- 
sponsibility, provided  he  shares  the  prize.  They  very 
nearly  come  to  blows  about  it ;  but  at  last  Trachalio 
proposes  to  submit  the  dispute  to  arbitration ;  and  as 
the  cottage  of  Daemones  is  close  at  hand,  they  agree  that 
he  shall  decide  as  to  the  disposal  of  the  property — 


THE  SHIPWRECK.  63 

Trachalio  not  being  aware  of  Gripus's  connection  with 
the  old  gentleman,  and  Gripus  hoping  that  his  master 
will  surely  give  an  award  in  his  favour. 

When  the  wallet  is  opened,  it  is  found  to  contain, 
besides  valuable  property  belonging  to  Labrax,  the 
precious  casket  containing  Palaestra's  family  relics :  and, 
by  desire  of  Daemones,  she  describes  the  articles  which 
ought  to  be  in  it,  in  order  to  prove  her  claim  to  its 
ownership.  To  his  joy  and  surprise,  one  of  these 
relics,  a  small  toy  implement,  bears  his  own  name,  and 
another  that  of  his  wife.  Palaestra  is  their  long-lost 
daughter,  stolen  in  her  childhood,  and  thus  restored. 
Of  course  she  is  handed  over  to  her  lover  Pleusidippus, 
a  free  woman. 

The  disposal  of  the  claims  to  the  rest  of  the  wallet's 
contents  hardly  meets  our  notions  of  dramatic  justice. 
Daemones  retains  in  his  possession  the  prize  which 
poor  Gripus  has  fished  up,  in  order  to  restore  it  to  its 
owner ;  not  only  without  any  hint  of  salvage-money, 
but  with  the  addition  of  a  long  moral  lecture  to  his 
slave  upon  honesty.  This  is  all  very  well  ;  but  the 
subsequent  proceedings  serve  to  show  that  if  it  was 
a  characteristic  of  the  slave  to  be  always  ready  to  cheat 
his  master,  the  master  had  also  his  peculiar  idea  of 
honesty  as  between  himself  and  his  slave.  Gripus 
meets  Labrax  lamenting  for  his  lost  wallet,  and  as 
a  last  hope  of  making  something  out  of  his  good  luck, 
agrees  to  inform  him  of  the  whereabouts  of  the  missing" 
treasure  for  the  consideration  of  a  talent  of  good  money 
paid  down.  Daemones,  when  he  comes  to  hear  of  the 
arrangement,  ratines  it  so  far  as  this  :  Gripus  is  his 
property  ;  therefore,  what  is  Gripus's  is  his.  Labrax 


64  THE  COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

has  to  pay  the  talent  into  the  hands  of  Dtemones,  who 
applies  half  to  the  ransom  of  his  daughter's  friend  and 
companion  in  misfortune,  and  allows  the  other  half  as 
the  price  of  Gripu.s's  freedom.  The  reply  which  that 
personage  makes  previously  to  his  master's  lecture  on 
morality  seems  to  show  that  he  took  it  for  ahout  as 
much  as  it  was  worth. 

Ah  !  so  I've  heard  the  players  on  the  stage 

Eehearse  the  very  finest  moral  sentiments, 

And  with  immense  applause  ;  showing  quite  clearly 

All  that  a  wise  man  ought  to  do :  and  then 

The  audience  would  go  home,  and  not  a  soul  of  'em 

Would  follow  that  grand  preaching  in  their  practice.* 

The  play  called  CISTELLAUIA — "The  Casket"  — 
turns  upon  the  same  incidents — the  loss  of  a  daughter 
when  young,  and  her  discovery  by  her  parents  by  means 
of  a  casket  of  trinkets  which  had  been  attached  to  her 
person.t  The  copies  of  this  play  are  very  imperfect,  and 
there  is  a  want  of  interest  in  the  scenes.  One  passage, 
in  which  Halisca,  the  slave  who  has  dropped  the  casket 
in  the  street  and  returns  to  look  for  it,  appeals  path- 

*  A  portion  of  this  comedy  appears  to  have  beeu  performed 
as  an  afterpiece  in  the  Dormitoiy  at  Westminster  in  1798,  when 
a  very  clever  "Fisherman's  Chorus,"  written  in  rhyming  Latin, 
by  the  well-known  "  Jemmy  Dot! J, "  then  Usher,  was  introduced. 
— See  Lusus  Alt.  Westm.,  i.  177. 

\  Parents  had  no  hesitation  in  "exposing"  a  child  whose 
birth  was  for  any  reason  inconvenient ;  leaving  it  to  die,  or  be 
picked  up  by  some  charitable  stranger,  as  might  be.  But  it  was 
held  a  sin  to  do  this  without  leaving  something  valuable  on  the 
child's  person  :  and  jewels,  or  other  articles  by  which  it  might 
possibly  be  recognised  afterwards,  were  often  fastened  to  its 
clothes. 


THE    CAPTIVES.  05 

etically  to  the  audience,  to  know  whether  any  of  them 
have  picked  it  up,  and  will  restore  it,  and  .so  save  her 
from  a  whipping,  may  remind  a  modern  reader  of  Mo- 
liere's  Harpagon  looking  among  the  audience  for  the 
thief  of  his  money.  The  despairing  taunt  with  which 
she  turns  away,  after  pausing  for  some  reply— 

"Tis  no  use  asking — there's  not  one  among  ye 
Does  aught  but  laugh  at  a  poor  woman's  troubles  "— 

is  strong  presumptive  evidence  that  the  spectators  at  a 
Roman  comedy  were  almost  exclusively  men. 

V.  — THE    CA.PTIVES. 

This  pretty  little  drama  is  quite  of  a  different  com- 
plexion from  the. rest.  The  author  tells  us,  in  his 
prologue,  that  we  are  not  to  expect  to  find  here  any  of 
the  old  stock  characters  of  comedy,  who,  as  he  is  free 
to  confess,  are  not  always  of  the  most  reputable  kind. 
The  interest  is,  in  fact,  rather  pathetic  than  comic,  and 
the  plot  is  of  the  simplest  kind.  Almost  the  only 
comic  element  is  supplied  by  the  speaker  of  the  pro- 
logue, who  has  a  joke  or  two  for  the  audience,  of  a 
very  mild  and  harmless  kind.  The  principal  characters 
in  the  play  appear  to  have  been  grouped  in  a  kind  of 
tableau  on  the  stage  while  the  prologue  was  delivered, 
in  this  as  in  some  other  plays.  The  prologist  informs 
the  audience  that  the  two  captives  who  stand  in  chains 
on  his  right  and  left,  are  Philocrates,  a  young  noble  of 
Elis,  and  his  slave  Tyndarus.  There  is  war  between 
Elis  and  the  ^tolians  ;  and  these  two  prisoners,  re- 
cently taken  in  battle,  have  been  purchased  amongst 
others  by  Hegio,  a  wealthy  citizen  of  JEtolia,  whose 

A.  c.  vol.  xvi.  E 


06  THE  COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS, 

own  son  is  now,  by  the  fortune  of  war,  a  prisoner  in 
Elis.  The  father  is  sparing  no  cost  in  purchasing  such 
captives  of  rank  and  birth  as  are  brought  to  JBtolia  and 
sold  as  slaves,  in  the  hope  of  being  able  thus  to  effect 
an  exchange  for  his  son.  He  feels  the  loss  of  this  son 
all  the  more,  because  his  younger  brother  was  carried 
off  in  his  infancy  by  a  revengeful  slave,  and  he  has 
never  seen  him  since.  "  Do  you  understand,  now  1 " 
says  the  speaker  to  the  audience — "  1  hear  a  gentleman 
standing  up  at  the  back  of  the  gallery  say  '  no.'  Then 
come  a  little  nearer,  sir,  if  you  please ;  I'm  not  going 
to  crack  my  voice  in  bawling  to  you  at  that  distance. 
And  if  you've  not  money  enough  to  pay  for  a  seat, 
you've  money  enough  to  walk  out,  which  I  recommend 
you  to  do.  And  now — you  gentlemen  that  can  afford 
to  pay  for  your  seats, — have  the  goodness  to  listen, 
while  I  continue  my  story."  He  goes  on,  after  the 
fashion  which  has  been  noticed  as  common  in  such 
prologues,  to  sketch  in  brief  the  whole  plot.  He  begs, 
however,  to  assure  the  audience,  confidentially,  that 
they  need  not  be  alarmed  because  there  is  a  war 
going  on  in  this  play  between  Elis  and  ^Etolia.  Tie 
promises  them — quite  in  the  spirit  of  Bottom  and  his 
company  of  players — that  they  "  will  leave  the  killing 
out ;  "  all  the  battles  shall  be  fought  behind  the  scenes. 
It  would  never  do  for  them,  he  says,  a  company  of 
poor  comedians,  to  encroach  upon  the  domain  of  tragedy. 
If  any  gentleman  present  wants  a  fight,  he  must  get 
one  up  on  his  own  account — and  it  shall  go  hard  but 
that  the  present  speaker  will  find  a  match  for  him,  if 
he  be  so  inclined.  He  concludes  by  asking  their  favour- 
able verdict  in  the  dramatic  contest : — 


THE    CAPTIVES.  67 

And  so  I  make  my  bow.     Sirs,  fare  ye  well ; 

Be  gentle  judges  of  our  comedy, 

As  ye  are — doubtless — valorous  hearts  in  war. 

The  interest  of  the  drama  lies  in  the  generous  devotion 
of  the  slave  Tyndarus  to  his  young  master,  Hegio 
has  ascertained  that  his  captive  Philocrates  is  the 
only  son  of  a  man  of  great  wealth,  and  hopes  that  by 
sending  a  message  to  the  father  he  may  enlist  his 
interest  at  Elis  in  making  search  for  his  own  son 
among  the  ^Etolian  prisoners  there,  and  sending  him 
home  in  exchange  for  Philocrates.  But  this  latter  has, 
at  the  suggestion  of  Tyndarus,  exchanged  clothes  with 
him,  and  the  slave,  who  is  nearly  of  the  same  age,  and 
of  noble  presence,  personates  the  master.  Under  this 
mistake  Hegio  sends  the  slave  (as  he  thinks)  to  Elis  to 
negotiate  there  with  the  father  of  Philocrates  the  re- 
lease of  his  son.  But  it  is  really  the  young  noble  who 
is  sent,  and  Tyndarus  who  personates  him  remains  a 
prisoner  in  his  place.  There  is  a  fine  passage  in  which 
the  disguised  slave  appeals  to  Hegio  for  generous  treat- 
ment during  his  captivity. 

As  free  a  man  as  was  your  son,  till  now, 

Was  I  ;  like  him,  the  hapless  chance  of  war 

Robbed  me  of  liberty  ;  he  stands  a  slave 

Among  my  people,  even  as  here  I  stand 

Fettered  before  you.     There  is  One  in  heaven, 

Be  sure  of  it,  who  sees  and  knows  all  tilings 

That  all  men  do.     As  you  shall  deal  with  me, 

So  will  He  deal  with  him.     He  will  show  grace 

To  him  who  showeth  grace  ;  He  will  repay 

Evil  for  evil.     (Hegio  appears  moved.)    Weep  you  for 

your  son  ? 
So  in  my  home  my  father  weeps  for  me. 


68  TIIK  COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

The  parting  between  Tyndarus  and  his  master  gives 
rise  to  another  scene  which  would  be  highly  effective 
in  the  hands  of  good  actors.  The  two  young  men  had 
been  brought  up  together,  it  must  be  remembered,  from 
childhood,  had  played  the  same  games,  gone  to  the 
same  school,  and  served  in  the  same  campaign.  There 
is  an  equality  of  feeling  between  them,  which  even  the 
miserable  conditions  of  slavery  have  not  been  able 
to  prevent.  Philocrates,  speaking  as  Tyndarus,  asks 
the  latter  if  he  has  any  message  to  send  home  to  his 
father. 

Tyndarus  (as  Pliilocrates).  Say  I  am  well ;  and  tell  linn 

this,  good  Tyndarus, 
We  two  have  lived  in  sweetest  harmony, 
Of  one  accord  in  all  things  ;  never  yet 
Have  you  been  faithless,  never  I  unkind. 
And  still,  in  this  our  strait,  you  have  been  true 
And  loyal  to  the  last,  through  woe  and  want, 
Have  never  failed  me,  nor  in  will  nor  deed. 
This  when  your  father  hears,  for  such  good  service 
To  him  and  to  his  son,  he  cannot  choose 
But  give  you  liberty.     I  will  insure  it, 
If  I  go  free  from  hence.     'Tis  you  alone, 
Your  help,  your  kindness,  your  devoted  service 
Shall  give  me  to  my  parents'  arms  again. 

P/tilocratfs  (as  Tyndarus}.     I  have  done  this  :  I'm  glad 

you  should  remember  ; 

And  you  have  well  deserved  it :   (emphatically)  for  if  I 
Were  in  nay  turn  to  count  up  all  the  kindness 
That  you  have  shown  to  me,  day  would  grow  night 
Before  the  tale  were  told.     Were  you  my  slave, 
You  could  have  shown  no  greater  zeal  to  serve  me. 

— Act  ii.  sc.  3. 


THE    CAPT1  VES.  CO 

ITegio  is  touched  by  the  affection  shown  by  the  young 
pair;  and Tyndarus  is  treated  as  liberally  as  a  prisoner 
can  be.  But  there  is  another  prisoner  of  war  of  whom 
Hegio  has  heard,  who  knows  this  young  man  Philo- 
crates  arid  his  family,  and  is  anxious  to  have  an  inter- 
view with  him,  which  Hegio  good-naturedly  allows. 
This  man  at  once  detects  the  imposture  ;  and  though 
Tyndarus  attempts  for  a  time  (in  a  scene  which  must  lie 
confessed  to  be  somewhat  tedious)  to  maintain  his 
assumed  character  in  spite  of  the  other's  positive  asser- 
tions, he  is  convicted  of  the  deception,  and  ordered  by 
the  indignant  Hegio  to  be  loaded  with  heavy  chains, 
and  taken  to  work  in  the  stone-quarries  ;  which  would 
seem  to  have  been  as  terrible  a  place  of  punishment  in 
Greece  as  we  know  they  were  in  Sicily.  In  vain  does 
Tyndarus  plead  his  duty  to  his  master  :  in  vain  does 
he  appeal  to  Hegio's  feelings  as  a  father — 

Tyn.  Think,  now — if  any  slave  who  called  you  master 
Had  done  this  for  your  son,  how  you  had  thanked  him  ! 
Would  you  have  grudged  him  liberty,  or  no  ? 
Would  you  have  loved  him  above  all  the  rest  ? 
Kay — answer  me. 

He.  I  grant  it. 

Tyn.  Oh,  why  then 

Are  you  thus  wroth  with  me  for  doing  likewise  ? 

He.  Your  faith  to  him  was  treachery  to  me. 

Tyn.  What!  would  you  ask  that  one  brief  night  and  day 
Should  give  youvclaim  on  a  poor  captive's  service 
Just  fallen  within  your  power,  to  cancel  his 
With  whom  I  lived  and  whom  I  loved  from  childhood  I 

Heg.   Then   seek  your  thanks   from   him.— Lead   him 
away. 

In  vain  does  his  fellow-captive,  whose  evidence  has 


79  THE   COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

brought  down  Hegio's  wrath  upon  him,  plead  on  his 
behalf.  Tyndarus  is  dragged  off  to  the  quarries,  pre- 
serving his  calmness  of  demeanour  to  the  last. 

Well — death  will  come — thy  threats  can  reach  no  further ; 

And  though  I  linger  to  a  long  old  age, 

Life's  span  of  suffering  is  hut  brief. — Farewell ! 

I  might  find  plea  to  curse  thee — but — farewell ! 

— Act  iii.  sc.  5. 

The  denouement  conies  rapidly.  There  is  a  long  sup- 
posed interval  between  the  third  and  the  two  last 
brief  acts  of  the  drama, — which  in  a  modern  play 
would  be  rather  termed  scenes.  Philocrates  returns 
from  Elis,  and  brings  with  him  Hegio's  son  Philopole- 
mus,  whom  he  has  ransomed  from  captivity.  But  he  has 
not  forgotten  his  faithful  Tyndarus,  and  has  come  in 
person  to  insure  his  liberation.  But  this  is  not  all.  He 
has  also  met  with  the  runaway  slave  who,  twenty  years 
ago,  had  stolen  from  his  home  the  younger  son  of 
Hegio.  When  this  man  is  now  cross-examined  by  his 
old  master,  it  is  discovered  that  he  had  fled  to  Elis,  and 
there  sold  the  child  to  the  father  of  Philocrates,  who 
had  made  a  present  of  him  to  his  own  boy,  as  was  not  un- 
usual, to  be  a  kind  of  live  toy  and  humble  playfellow. 
It  is  this  very  Tyndarus,  who  now  stands  before  his 
father  loaded  with  chains  and  haggard  with  suffering 
of  that  father's  infliction.  The  noble  nature  displayed 
by  the  captive  is  explained  by  his  noble  blood. 

No  one  will  deny  that  it  is  a  pretty  little  drama, 
•with  a  good  deal  of  quiet  pathos  in  it.  But  (if  we  have 
the  piece  complete,  which  may  be  doubtful)  whatever 
pathos  a  modern  audience  would  find  in  these  last 


THE   T\YO  MEN^ECHMI.  71 

scenes  would  be  clue  to  such  force  of  expression  and 
by-play  as  could  be  thrown  into  them  by  clever  actors  : 
they  are  very* bald  indeed  in  the  reading.  The  claim 
which  the  speaker  of  the  brief  epilogue  makes  for  the 
play,  that  its  morality  is  of  the  purest  and  simplest,  is 
well  deserved.  It  contains,  strange  to  say,  no  female 
character  whatever.  For  these  and  other  reasons  'The 
Captives,'  in  spite  of  the  lack  of  comic  element,  used  to 
be  a  very  favourite  selection  with  English  schoolmasters, 
in  the  days  when  the  performance  of  a  Latin  comedy 
by  the  elder  scholars  seems  to  have  formed  part  of  the 
annual  routine  in  most  of  our  large  schools.  Yet,  strange 
to  say,  there  is  no  record  of  it  having  ever  been  per- 
formed at  Westminster.  Perhaps  the  absence  of  those 
distinctly  comic  characters  and  situations  which,  are 
made  so  telling  in  the  annual  performance  by  the 
Queen's  Scholars  has  been  the  reason  of  its  neglect. 

VI. THE    TWO    MEN^CHMI. 

This  comedy  deserves  notice  not  so  much  for  its 
own  merits — for  whatever  they  might  have  appeared 
to  a  Roman  audience,  they  are  not  highly  appreciable  by 
our  taste — but  because  upon  it  Shak?peare  founded 
his  '  Comedy  of  Errors.'  It  appears  to  have  been  the 
only  work  of  Plautus  wl.  oh  had  at  that  time  been 
translated  into  English,  which  may  account  for  its  being 
the  only  one  from  which  Shakspeare  seems  to  have 
borrowed.  The  plot  is  improbable  in  the  highest 
degree,  though  admitting  some  farcical  situations. 
It  all  turns  upon  the  supposed  resemblance  between 
two  twin-brothers  —  so  strong  as  to  deceive  their 


72  THE  COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

servants,  tlieir  nearest  friends,  and  even  their  wives. 
Antipholus  of  Ephesus  and  Antipholus  of  Syracuse 
are  but  reproductions  of  Mensechmus  of  Epidainnus 
and  Mensechmus  Sosicles — the  twins  of  Pluutus's 
comedy,  who  were  separated  in  their  youth,  and 
whose  marvellous  likeness,  which  makes  it  impossible 
to  distinguish  between  them,  leads  to  the  series  of 
ludicrous  mistakes  and  entanglements 'which  are  at 
last  set  right  by  their  personal  meeting  on  the  stage. 
Shakspeare  has  added  the  pair  of  Dromios,  who,  like 
their  masters,  are  duplicates  of  each  other  :  thereby 
increasing  the  broad  fun  of  the  piece,  such  as  it  is, 
and  not  materially  increasing  the  improbability.  The 
use  of  masks  upon  the  Roman  stage  made  the  pre- 
sentation of  the  likeness  comparatively  easy  ;  whereas 
in  the  English  play  all  has  to  depend  upon  exact 
similarity  of  costume  and  the  making  up  of  the  faces 
of  the  two  actors,  which  is  not  always  satisfactory. 
The  incidents  in  the  Latin  play  are  not  so  amusing  as 
in  Shakspeare's  version  of  it,  and  the  morals  much 
more  objectionable. 

VII. AMPHITRYON. 

'Amphitryon'  is  also  founded  on  a  famous  case  of 
mistaken  identity.  It  is  termed  by  Plautus  a  "  tragi- 
comedy; "  which  does  not  mean  that  there  is  anything 
in  it  to  which  we  should  apply  the  word  "  tragic," 
but  merely  that  the  introduction  of  gods  amongst  the 
characters  gives  it  some  of  the  features  of  classic 
tragedy.  In  saying  that  it  is  a  dramatic  version 
of  the  myth  of  Jupiter  and  Alcmena,  enough  has 
been  said  to  indicate  that  the  morality  in  this  case 


AM  PHI  TRY  OX.  73 

is  that  common  to  pagan  mythology.  Tin's  did  not 
prevent  it  from  being  acted  at  "Westminster  so  late 
as  1792.  There  are  well-known  French  and  English 
imitations  of  it:  the  'Amphitryon'  of  Moliere  and 
'  The  Two  Sosias '  of  Dryden.  It  must  be  said,  at 
least,  in  favour  of  the  great  French  dramatist,  that  the 
morality  in  his  play  is  higher  than  that  of  the  original. 
'Amphitryon,'  however,  has  some  Avit,  which  is  more 
than  can  be  well  said  for  the  '  Mensechmi.'  Here,  too, 
it  is  possible  that  we  haAre  the  original  of  the  two 
Dromios  in  Shakspeare's  comedy.  For,  as  Jupiter  has 
assumed  the  character  and  likeness  of  Amphitryon,  so 
he  has  directed  Mercury  to  put  on  the  resemblance  of 
Sosia,  Amphitryon's  body-slave.  The  scene  in  which 
poor  Sosia,  sent  by  his  master  (who  has  just  returned 
from  his  campaign)  to  announce  his  arrival  to  his  wile 
Alcmena,  is  met  at  the  door  by  his  double  in  the 
person  of  Mercury,  is  very  comically  drawn.  It  has 
the  defect  of  being,  at  least  to  our  modern  taste,  some- 
what too  prolonged,  and  only  a  portion  of  it  can  be 
given  here.  Mercury  insists  upon  it  that  he  is  the 
true  and  original  Sosia,  gives  the  other  a  drubbing  as 
an  impudent  impostor,  and  threatens  to  give  him  a 
worse  if  he  does  not  at  once  take  himself  off.  Sosia 
becomes  extremely  puzzled  as  to  his  own  identity  when 
his  rival,  in  reply  to  his  questions,  shows  an  intimate 
knowledge  of  all  his  master's  movements  during  the 
late  campaign,  and  especially  in  the  matter  of  a  gold 
cup  presented  to  him  out  of  the  spoils,  which  is 
secured  in  a  casket  under  Amphitryon's  o\vn  seal — 
Avhich  seal,  however,  this  duplicate  Sosia  can  describe 
perfectly. 


74  THE  COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

Sosia  (asiile).  He  beats  me  there.     I  must  look  out,  it 

seems, 

For  a  new  name.     Now  where  on  earth  could  this  fellow 
Have  been,  to  see  all  that  ?     I'll  have  him  yet ; 
Things  that  I  did  by  myself,  with  no  one  near — 
What  I  did  in  the  tent — it  can't  be  possible 
He'll  tell  me  that.    (Aloud.)  Now  look — if  you  be  Sosia, 
What  was  I  doing  in  rny  master's  tent, 
That  day  they'd  such  hard  fighting  in  the  front  ? 
Come — tell  me  that,  my  friend — and  I'll  give  in. 

Mercury  (slily).  There  was  a  cask  of  wine :   3  filled  a 
pitcher — 

Sos.  (to  himself).  He's  not  far  out. 

filer.  Filled  it  with  good  red  wine — 

As  honest  stuff  as  ever  grew  in  grape. 

Sos.  Marvellous  ! — unless  this  chap  was  in  the  cask ! — 
Fact — I  did  fill  the  pitcher — and  drank  it  too. 

Mer.  How  now  ?  have  I  convinced  you  I  am  Sosia  ? 

Sos.  (puzzled).  D'ye  say  I'm  not '? 

Mer.  How  can  JTOU  be,  if  I  am  ? 

Sos.  (Jialf  crying).  I  swear  by  Jove  I  am  Sosia — it's  no  lie. 

Mer.  I  swear  by  Mercury  it  is  :  Jove  won't  believe  you  ; 
He'd  trust  my  word  far  sooner  than  your  oath. 

Sos.  Who  am  I  then,  I  ask  you,  if  not  Sosia  ? 

Mer.  That  I  can't  tell  you — but  you  can't  be  Sosia, 
So  long  as  I  am  :  when  I've  done  with  the  name, 
Then  you  may  take  it.     Now  be  off  with  you, 
Name  or  no  name,  unless  you  want  a  thrashing. 

Sos.  Upon  my  life,  now  that  I  look  at  him, 
And  recollect  myself — (I  take  a  peep 
Into  my  master's  glass  occasionally) 

It  strikes  me  that  there  is  an  uncommon  likeness.     (Ex- 
amines Mercury  furtively.) 

The  broad-brimmed  hat  and  surcoat — just  the  same  ; 
He  looks  as  like  me  as  I  do  myself  ! 
Legs — feet — proportions — short-cropped  hair  — bull-neck — 


AMPHITRYON.  75 

Eyes — nose — lips — cheeks — the  very  chin  and  beard- 

The  whole  of  him  is  me  !  the  very  ditto  ! 

I  wonder  whether  he's  got  whip-marks  on  his  back — 

If  so,  the  copy's  perfect.*   {Cogitating.)    Still — it  seem?, 

When  I  consider  on't,  I  must  be  I  : 

I'm  the  same  man  I  was  ;  I  know  my  master — 

I  know  his  house, — there  'tis.     I've  got  my  senses  ; 

(Pinching  himself.)    And   I   can   feel.     No  ;    I   will   not 
believe 

A  word  this  fellow  says.     I'll  knock  again.     (Goes  up  to 

the  door.) 

Mer.  (rushing  up).  Hallo  !  where  now  1 
Sos.  Home,  to  be  sure. 

Mer.  Be  off— 

Be  off  like  lightning,  if  you'd  keep  whole  bones! 
Sos.  Mayn't  I  give  master's  message  to  his  lady  1 
Mer.  To  his — by  all  means  ;  only  not  to  ours  : 

If  yon  provoke  me  more,  I'll  break  your  head. 
Sos.  (running  away).    No — no  !  I'll  go!  Poor  devil  that 
I  am ! 

Where  did  I  lose  myself?  when  was  I  changed  1 

How  did  I  lose  my  corporal  capacity  1 

Did  I  forget  myself,  when  I  went  abroad, 

And  leave  myself  at  home  here,  by  mistake  1 

For  he's  got  what  was  rue,  there's  no  doubt  of  it ; 

All  the  outside,  I  mean,  that  I  used  to  have. 

*  Moliere  has  improved  upon  this  pnssnge,  in  1he  scene  in 
which  Sosia  tells  his  master  of  the  beating  which  he  has  just  re- 
ceived from  his  own  double,  and  how  lie  was  at  lat>t  convinced 
that  this  latter  was  the  real  man :  — 

"Longtemps  d'impostenr  j'ai  traite"  ce  moi-meme  ; 
Mais  a  me  recoimaltre  enfin  ii  in'a  force" : 
J'ai  vu  que  ee"tait  inoi,  sans  aucune  stratageme  ; 
Des  pieds  jusq'a  la  tete  il  est  coniine  inoi  fait, — 
Beau,  1'air  noble,  bien  piis,  les  manieres  ehannantes ! " 
— Atnphit.,  act  ii.  sc.  1. 


76  THE   COMEDIES  OF  PLUATUS. 

Well — I'll  go  back  again  and  tell  my  master: 
Perhaps  he  won't  own  me  !     The  gods  grant  he  don't ! 
I  shall  be  iree  then  even  if  I'm  nobody. 

— Act  i.  sc.  1. 

The  scene  in  which  the  pilot  of  the  ship  is  unable 
to  decide  between  the  false  Amphitryon  and  the  true, 
when  at  last  they  are  brought  upon  the  stage  together, 
is  probably  only  a  "restoration  "  of  the  mutilated  work 
of  Plautus.  Moliere  has  substituted  Sosia  for  the 
pilot,  and  makes  him  decide  in  favour  of  the  false  pre- 
tender. The  convincing  argument  which  confirms  him 
in  this  decision  has  passed  into  a  proverb,  better 
known  perhaps  in  itself  than  in  its  context.  Jupiter, 
in  his  assumed  character  of  Amphitryon,  is  made  to 
reserve  the  disputed  identity  for  the  verdict  of  the 
Thebans  in  full  assembly  :  meanwhile  he  invites  all 
the  company  present  to  dinner  : — 

"  Sosia.  Je  ne  me  trompais,  Messieurs,  ce  mot  termine 
Toute  ['irresolution; 

Le  veritable  Amphitryon 

Est  rAmphitryon  oil  1'on  dine."  * 

VIII. THE    POT    OF    GOLD    (AULULATUA). 

The  prologue  to  this  comedy  is  spoken  in  the  char- 
acter of  the  "  Lar  Familiaris,"  as  the  Romans  called  him 
—  a  sort  of  familiar  spirit  supposed  to  be  attached  to 
every  Roman  household,  who  had  his  own  little  altar 

*  Duulop  shows,  however,  that  this  is  really  borrowed  from 
an  older  comedy  on  the  same  subject  by  Rotrou — '  Les  Denx 
Sosies ' — which  the  later  author  lias  laid  under  contribution 
in  other  scenes.  Sosia's  words  in  Rotrou's  play  are — "Point, 
point  d' Amphitryon  ou  Ton  ne  dine  point." 


THE  POT   OF   GOLD.  77 

near  the  family  hearth,  and  whose  business  it  was,  if 
duly  cultivated,  to  look  after  the  family  fortunes. — a 
private  "  Jlobiu  Good  fellow."  He  iufornistheaudier.ee 
that  the  owners  of  the  establishment  over  which  he 
presides  at  present  have  been  a  generation  of  misers. 
The  grandfather  had  buried  under  the  hearth  a  "  Pot 
of  Gold,"  intrusting  the  secret  only  to  him,  the  Lar, 
and  praying  him  to  see  to  its  safe  keeping  ;  and  too 
covetous,  even  at  his  death,  to  disclose  this  secret  to 
his  son.  The  son  was  rather  worse  than  his  father, 
grudging  the  Lar  his  sacrifices  even  more  than  the  old 
man  had  ;  and  therefore,  the  Lar  saw  no  good  reason 
for  discovering  the  treasure  to  him.  And  now  the 
grandson,  Euclio,  is  as  bad  as  either  father  or  grand- 
father. But  he  has  a  daughter ;  rather  a  nice  young 
woman,  the  Lar  considers  :  she  is  constantly  paying 
him  little  attentions,  bringing  incense,  and  wine,  and 
garlands,  and  suchlike,  to  dress  his  altar  :  and  as  the 
Lar  must  have  seen  a  good  deal  of  her,  and  the  audi- 
ence is  never  allowed  to  see  her  at  all,  they  have  to  take 
his  word  for  her  attractions.  She  will  be  expecting  a 
husband  soon  :  and  the  family  guardian  has  fixed  upon 
one  for  her — Lyconides,  nephew  to  one  of  their  next- 
door  neighbours,  Megadorus.  But  as  he  has  some 
reason  to  know  that  the  young  man  would  not  be  ac- 
ceptable to  her  father,  he  will  contrive  that  the  uncle 
shall  ask  the  girl  in  marriage  for  himself,  and  after- 
wards resign  in  his  nephew's  favour.  And  he  has 
made  known  to  Euclio  the  secret  of  the  buried  treasure, 
in  the  hope  that  out  of  it  he  will  provide  a  liberal 
dowry  for  the  young  lady  who  is  so  zealous  in  her 
household  devotions. 


78  THE   COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTVS. 

But  Euclio  has  no  intention  of  using  the  gold  in  that 
or  in  any  other  fashion.  It  becomes  his  one  delight, 
and  his  perpetual  torment.  He  leaves  it  buried  in  its 
hiding-place  :  but  he  is  in  continual  terror  lest  it  should 
be  discovered.  He  scarcely  dares  move  from  home, 
lest  when  he.  returns  he  should  find  it  gone.  Every 
noise  that  he  hears,  he  fancies  proceeds  from  some  at- 
tempt to  carry  off  his  treasure.  He  leads  his  poor  old 
housekeeper,  his  one  slave  Staphyla,  a  wretched  life, 
from  his  perpetual  worrying.  When  his  neighbour 
Megadorus  comes  to  ask  the  hand  of  his  daughter  in 
marriage,  he  is  sure  that  it  is  because  he  has  heard  in 
some  way  of  the  gold.  His  continual  protest  is  that 
he  is  miserably  poor.  One  of  the  most  ludicrous  situa- 
tions is  the  dilemma  in  which  he  finds  himself  placed, 
when  upon  some  occasion  a  dole  of  public  money  is 
announced  for  the  poorer  citizens.  If  he  does  not  at- 
tend and  claim  his  share,  his  neighbours  will  think  he  is 
a  rich  man,  and  be  sure  to  try  to  hunt  out  his  money :  if 
he  goes  to  the  ward-mote  to  receive  it,  and  has  to  wait 
perhaps  some  time  for  the  distribution,  what  may  not 
have  become  of  his  darling  "  Pot"  during  his  absence  ? 
Acute  critics  have  said,  apparently  with  truth,  that  in 
Euclio  we  have  the  pure  miser  ;  who  has  no  desire  to 
increase  his  store,  no  actual  pleasure  in  the  possession, 
no  sense  of  latent  power  in  the  gold  which  he  treasures, 
but  who  is  a  very  slave  to  it  in  the  terror  of  losing  it. 

Euclio,  though  much  alarmed  at  first  as  to  the  pro- 
bable motives  of  Megadorus's  request,  consents  to  give 
him  his  daughter ;  still,  however,  under  protest  that 
he  is  a  very  poor  man,  which  the  other  fully  believes. 
He  can  give  no  dowry  with  her  :  but  Megadorus  is 


THE  POT  OF  GOLD.  7!) 

prepared  to  take  her  without;  he  will  even  provide 
out  of  his  own  purse  all  the  expenses  of  the  wedding- 
feast,  and  will  send  in  to  Euclio's  house  both  the  pro- 
visions and  the  cooks  required  for  the  occasion. 

But  the  cooks,  when  they  come,  and  begin  to  busy 
themselves  in  the  house,  are  a  source  of  continual 
agony  to  the  miser.  He  hears  one  of  them  call  for  a 
"  larger  pot  : "  and  he  rushes  at  once  to  the  protection 
of  his  gold.  He  finds  his  own  dunghill-cock  scratching 
about  the  house  ;  and  he  is  sure  that  these  new-comers 
have  trained  him  to  discover  the  buried  treasure,  and 
knocks  the  poor  bird's  head  off  in  his  fury.  In  the 
end  he  drives  them  all  off  the  premises  under  a  shower 
of  blows,  and  only  when  he  has  in  their  absence  dug  up 
the  precious  pot,  and  got  it  safe  under  his  cloak,  will 
he  allow  them  to  come  back  again.  When  the  bride- 
groom expectant,  in  the  joy  of  his  heart,  invites  him  to 
drink  with  him,  he  feels  satisfied  that  his  intention  is 
to  make  him  drunk,  and  so  to  Avring  from  him  his 
secret. 

The  miser  carries  off  the  pot,  and  proceeds  to  bury 
it  afresh  in  the  temple  of  Faith,  placing  it  under  that 
goddess's  protection.  He  finds  that  this  proceeding  has 
been  watched  by  a  slave  belonging  to  Megadorus,  and 
carries  the  gold  off  again  to  the  sacred  grove  of  Syl- 
vanus,  where  he  buries  it  once  more.  This  time, however, 
the  slave  takes  his  measures  successfully,  by  getting  up 
into  a  tree ;  and  when  Euclio  is  gone,  he  unearths  the 
pot,  and  carries  it  off  rejoicing.  The  discovery  of  his 
loss  almost  drives  the  miser  frantic  :  and  the  scene  is 
worth  extracting,  if  only  because  Moliere  has  borrowed 
it  almost  entire  in  the  well-known  solilo^oy  of  Ilarpa- 


80  THE  COM  I!  DIES  OF  PLAUTU&. 

gon  in  '  L'Avare.'  It  shall  be  given  in  as  literal  a  prose 
version  as  it  will  bear,  in  order  to  its  more  ready  com- 
parison with  the  French  imitation. 

EUCUO  (xolus,  rusldng  on  the  stage). 

I'm  ruined  !  dead  !  murdered  ! — where  shall  I  run  ? 
Where  shall  I  not  run  to  ?  Stop  him  there,  stop  him  ! — 
Stop  whom  !  Who's  to  stop  him  ?  (Striking  his  forehead 
in  despair.)  I  can't  tell — I  can  see  nothing — I'm  going 
blind.  Where  I'm  going,  or  where  I  am,  or  who  I  am,  I 
cannot  for  my  life  be  sure  of  !  ( Wringing  his  hands,  and 
appealing  to  the  audience.}  Oh  pray — I  beseech  you,  help 
me  !  I  implore  you,  do  !  Show  me  the  man  that  stole 
it  !  Ah  !  people  put  on  respectable  clothes,  and  sit  there 
as  if  they  were  all  honest  !  (Addressing  a  spectator  in  the 
front  seats.}  What  did  you  say,  sir  ?  I  can  believe  you, 
I'm  sure  — I  can  see  from  yonr  looks  you're  an  honest  man. 
(Looking  round  on  tlwm,  all.)  What  is  it  I  Why  do  you 
all  laugh  ?  Ah,  I  know  you  all !  There  are  thieves  he,e, 
1  know,  in  plenty  !  Eh  !  have  none  of  them  got  it  ?  I'm 
a  dead  man  !  Tell  me  then,  who's  got  it  ? — You  don't 
know  ?  Oh,  wretch,  wretch  that  I  am  !  utterly  lost  and 
ruined  !  Never  was  man  in  such  miserable  plight.  Oh, 
what  groans,  what  horrible  anguish  this  day  has  brought 
me  !  Poverty  and  hunger  !  I'm  the  most  xinhappy  man 
on  earth.  For  what  use  is  life  to  me,  when  I  have  lost  all 
my  gold  ?  And  I  kept  it  so  carefully  ! — Pinched  myself, 
starved  myself,  denied  myself  in  everything  !  And  now 
others  are  making  merry  over  it, — mocking  at  my  loss  and 
my  misery  !  I  cannot  hear  it ! 

— Act  v.  sc.  2.* 

The  scene  which  follows  between  the  miser  and  the 
*  Compare  Moliere's  'L'Avare,'  act  iv.  sc.  7. 


THE  POT  OF  GOLD.  81 

young  man  Lyconides,  who  has  anticipated  his  uncle 
in  the  love  of  the  miser's  daughter,  has  also  been  bor- 
rowed by  Moliere.  Lyconides  conies  to  confess  that 
he  has  stolen  the  young  lady's  affections  ;  but  Euclio  is 
so  full  of  his  one  great  loss,  that  lie  persists'iii  interpret- 
ing all  Lyconides's  somewhat  incoherent  language  tc 
imply  that  he  is  the  thief  of  the  gold.  The  play  upon 
the  Latin  word  olla,  which  means  "  pot,"  and  is  also 
the  old  form  of  ilia,  "  she,"  helps  the  equivoque  materi- 
ally. But  the  French  version  is  far  more  amusing  ;  and 
the  words  of  Harpagon,  when,  in  reply  to  Vale-re's  talk 
about  "la  passion  qtie  ses  beaux  yeux  m'ont  inspiree, 
he  exclaims  in  bewilderment,  "  Les  beaux  yeux  de  ma 
cassette  !"  *  has  passed,  like  so  many  of  Moliere's  lines, 
into  a  favourite  proverb. 

This  play  is  imperfect,  and  we  only  know  what  the 
catastrophe  was  from  the  brief  sketch  in  the  metrical 
prologue,  which  Priscian  the  grammarian  is  said  to 
have  affixed  to  each  of  these  comedies.  The  lover 
recovers  the  ppt  of  gold  for  its  owner  ;  and — by  some 
miraculous  change  in  the  miser's  nature — is  presented 
with  it  as  a  dowry  for  the  daughter.  The  later  scenes 
have  indeed  been  supplied  by  more  than  one  ingenious 
"  restorer  ; "  but  such  restorations  are  unsatisfactory  at 
the  best. 

Besides  the  admirable  adaptation  of  this  comedy  in 
the  French,  no  less  than  three  English  dramatists, 
Fielding,  Shadwell,  and  Wycherley,  have  each  a 
comedy  called  '  The  Miser,'  the  plot  and  materials  of 
all  which  are  borrowed  more  or  less  from  Plautus. 

*  '  L'Avare,'  act  v.  sc.  1. 
A.  C.  vol.  xvL  f 


82  THE  COMEDIES  Of  PLAUTUS. 

IX.  -  THE    TRICKSTER    (PSEUDOLUsX 

This  comedy  would  deserve  special  notice,  if  only 
because  it  was,  if  we  may  trust  Cicero,  the  "  darling  " 
of  Plautus.  An  author,  however,  is  not  an  infallible 
judge  of  his  own  works  ;  and  though  the  action  of  the 
piece  is  very  busy  and  lively,  and  the  tricks  of  Pseu- 
dolus  fairly  amusing,  few  modern  readers  would  be 
likely  to  select  it  as  their  favourite.  Probably  it  might 
act  better  than  it  reads.  Its  plot  is  the  old  story  of 
money  which  has  to  be  raised  in  some  way  for  the 
ransom  of  a  slave-girl  out  of  the  hands  of  the  dealer, 
and  the  humour  consists  entirely  in  the  devices  of 
Pseudolus  to  procure  it  for  his  young  master.  But 
one  of  the  early  scenes  contains  such  a  graphic  picture 
of  one  of  these  hateful  traffickers  in  human  flesh  and 
blood,  that  portions  of  it  may  be  worth  presenting  to 
the  reader. 


Enter  BALLIO,  the  slave-dealer,  and  four 

all  armed  vrith  whips  :  other  slaves  following. 

Come  out,  here  !  move  !  stir  about,  ye  idle  rascals  ! 

The  very  worst  bargain  that  man  ever  made, 

Not  worth  your  keep  !     There's  ne'er  a  one  of  ye 

That  has  thought  of  doing  honest  work. 

I  shall  never  get  money's  worth  out  of  your  hides, 

Unless  it  be  in  this  sort  (lays  about  them  with  the  whip). 

Such  tough  hides  too  ! 

Their  ribs  have  no  more  feeling  than  an  ass's  — 
You'll  hurt  yourself  long  before  you'll  hurt  them 
And  this  is  all  their  plan  —  these  whipping-posts  — 
The  moment  they've  a  chance,  it's  pilfer,  plunder, 
Rob,  cheat,  eat,  drink,  and  run  away'a  the  word, 


THE   TRICKSTER.  83 

That's  all  they'll  do.     You'd  better  leave  a  wolf 

To  keep  the  sheep,  than  trust  a  house  to  them. 

Yet,  no\v,  to  look  at  'em,  they're  not  amiss  ; 

They're  all  so  cursedly  deceitful.— Now — look  here  ; 

Mind  what  I  say,  the  lot  of  ye  ;  unless 

You  all  get  rid  of  these  curst  sleepy  ways, 

Dawdling  and  maundering  there,  I'll  mark  your  backs 

In  a  very  particular  and  curious  pattern — 

.With  as  many  stripes  as  a  Campanian  quilt, 

And  as  many  colours  as  an  Egyptian  carpet. 

I  warned  you  yesterday  ;  you'd  each  your  work  ; 

But  you're  such  a  cursed, — idle, — mischievous  crew — (gives 
one  of  them  a  cut  at  each  word) 

That  I'm  obliged  to  let  you  have  this  as  a  memorandum. 

Oh!  that's  your  game,  then,  is  it  ?    So  you  think 

Your  ribs  are  as  hard  as  this  is  ?  (Shows  his  wliip.}  Now, 
j  ust  look  ! 

(Turning  to  his  ivhipping-slaves}.  They're  minding  some- 
thing else  !  Attend  to  this, 

(Striking  one  of  the  others.}  Mind  this,  now,  will  you  1 
Listen,  while  I  speak, 

You  generation  that  were  born  for  flogging  ; 

D'ye  think  your  backs  are  tougher  than  this  cow-hide  1 

(Lays  about  him  with  it.}  Why,  what's  the  matter  ?  Does 
it  hurt  ?  O  dear  !— 

That's  what  slaves  get  when  they  won't  mind  their  masters. 

— Act  i.  sc.  2. 

There  was  a  highly  comic  element  in  this,  we  may  be 
sure,  to  an  audience  of  Roman  freemen.  Even  if  there 
were,  as  it  is  certain  there  must  have  been,  present  in 
the  theatre,  many  who  had  been  slaves  themselves,  and 
whose  fathers  had  been  in  slavery,  and  many  who  were 
slaves  still,  we  may  feel  only  too  sure  that  their  laugh 
was  amongst  the  loudest.  Among  the  curses  of  modern 


84  THE  COME  LUES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

slavery  has  been  the  selfish  disregard  of  human  suffer- 
ing which  it  encouraged  not  only  ainongst  the  masters 
but  amongst  the  slaves  themselves  ;  and  it  is  well 
known  that  a  negro  overseer  has  often  shown  far  more 
cruelty  towards  those  of  his  own  colour  than  the. 
white  owner  of  the  plantation. 

The  slave  Pseudolus,  who  is  the  hero  of  this  piece, 
and  from  whom  Moliere  seems  to  have  borrowed  in 
some  degree  his  character  of  Mascarille  in  '  L'Etourdi,' 
is  somewhat  of  a  more  intellectual  rascal  than  others 
of  his  type  who  appear  in  these  comedies.  He  looks 
upon  successful  roguery  as  a  highly  intellectual  ac- 
complishment. 

Just  as  the  poet,  when  he  takes  his  pen, 

Seeks  things  which  upon  earth  have  no  existence, 

And  straightway  finds  them,  and  makes  that  like  truth 

Which  is  but  very  falsehood  ;  thus  will  I 

In  my  way  be  a  poet ;  these  gold  pieces 

Which  are  not,  shall  be  ;  genius  shall  create  them. 

The  scene  in  which  he  meets  his  master  Simo,  who  is 
looking  for  him  in  order  to  make  some  inquiries  as  to 
the  late  discreditable  goings-on  of  his  son,  in  which  he 
thinks  with  some  justice  that  Pseudolus  has  been  aiding 
and  abetting,  is  a  good  specimen  of  cool  effrontery. 
Simo  is  accompanied  by  his  friend  Callipho,  and  Pseu- 
dolus sees  them  coming. 

Pseudolus  (to  himself).    A  bold  behaviour  in  a  doubtful 

cause 

Is  half  the  victory.     (Bowing  profoundly  to  Simo.)    Sir, 
my  best  respects — 


THE   TRICKSTER.  85 

They  are  my  master's   due.    (Bowing  to  Catty/ho.)     My 

second  best, 

Such  as  are  left  me,  sir,  I  offer  you. 
/Simo  (gruffly).     Good  morning.     Where   may  you    be 

going,  eh  ? 
Pseud.    I'm   standing  still,  sir,  as  you  miyht   observe 

(striking  an  attitude). 
Si.  Look  at  the  fellow's  posture,  Callipho  ! 
Stands  like  a  lord  there  ! 

Callipho.  Well,  he's  not  afraid  ; 

That's  a  good  sign. 

Pseud.  I  hold,  sir,  that  the  slave 

Who  has  an  honest  conscience  (lays  his  hand  on  his  heart) 

should  feel  proud, 
Especially  in  the  presence  of  his  master. 

Si.  Hark  to  him  !     Now  he'll  so  philosophise, 
A.nd  choke  you  with  a  flood  of  clever  words, 
You'd  think  he  was  not  Pseudolus,  but  Socrates.* 

Pseud.  You  hold  me  in  contempt,  sir — that  I  know  ; 
You  do  not  trust  me  ;  ah  !  you'd  have  me  be 
A  rascal ;  no,  sir — I'll  be  honest  still. 

— Act  i.  sc.  5. 

His  master  asks  him  whether  he  can  answer  honest- 
ly a  few  questions  about  his  son :  and  Pseudolus  assures 
him  that  his  replies  shall  he  "  as  the  oracles  of  Delphi." 
His  son  has  got  into  trouble1?  Yes.  Owes  money] 
Yes.  He,  Pseudolus,  is  trying  to  procure  it  for  him  ] 
Yes.  Probably  intending,  by  some  tricks  or  cajolery, 
to  extract  it  out  of  his — the  father's— pocket?  Pseudo- 
lus confesses  that  he  had  such  intention.  And,  after 

*This  reputation  for  "sophistry"  seems  to  have  followed 
Socrates  from  the  pages  of  Aristophanes  to  those  of  his  brother 
dramatist. 


8G  THK   COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

some  satirical  compliment  from  Simo  upon  his  candour, 
and  thanks  for  having  thus  put  him  on  his  guard,  lie 
coolly  assures  his  master  that  he  retains  this  intention 
still,  and  is  confident  of  succeeding  in  it.  Nay,  more 
—  -when  Simo  challenges  him  to  try,  he  will  undertake 
not  only  to  get  from  him  the  money  required  for  the 
ransom  of  the  young  person  upon  whom  his  son  has  set 
his  heart,  but  to  get  her  away  from  her  present  owner 
without  any  ransom  at  all.  It  ends  in  a  promise  from 
Simo  to  make  him  a  present  of  the  sum  required,  if  he 
succeeds  in  his  design  upon  Ballio  the  slave-dealer.  The 
old  gentleman,  however,  gets  so  uneasy  on  the  subject, 
that  he  succeeds  in  "  hedging  "  his  own  stake  in  the 
matter  by  telling  Ballio  of  the  plot  which  is  laid  for 
him,  and  making  a  wager  with  him  to  the  same  amount 
that  Pseudolus  will  beat  him  in  spite  of  all  precautions. 
He  does  ;  and  his  master — who  is  evidently  as  proud 
of  possessing  such  a  clever  slave  as  some  people  are  of 
a  specially  mischievous  child  —  hands  him  over  the 
money  ;  with  the  less  reluctance,  because  he  gets  re- 
couped at  the  expense  of  the  wretched  Baliio,  who 
loses  both  his  slave  and  his  wager.  Pseudolus  liber- 
ally offers  to  return  his  master  half,  if  he  will  join  him 
at  a  supper  which  he  has  ordered  in  celebration  of  his 
double  triumph  ;  and  Simo,  in  accordance  with  that 
curious  combination  of  familiarity  and  despotism  which 
has  been  remarked  as  pervading  all  the  relations  be- 
tween master  and  slave,  accepts  the  invitation  at  once, 
although  Pseudolus  is  very  far  from  sober  when  he  gives 
it.  Simo  suggests  that  he  should  also  invite  the  audi- 
ence ;  but  Pseudolus  replies-  that  none  of  them  have 
ever  yet  invited  htm.  II,  however,  they  will  now  sig 


THE   YOUNG  CARTHAGINIAN.  87 

iiify  their  approval  of  the  comedy,  he  will  give  them 
an  invitation — to-morrow. 

The  plays  named  'En  Dices'  and  'BACCHIDES'  both 
turn  \tpon  incidents  very  similar  to  the  preceding,  the 
clever  and  unscrupulous  slave  being  the  leading  charac- 
ter in  both.  They  call  for  no  particular  notice  here  ; 
unless  it  be  to  mention  that  the  'Epidicus '  must  have 
been,  like  the  play  just  noticed,  a  special  favourite  with 
its  author,  since  he  makes  one  of  the  characters  in  his 
'  Bacchides '  say  that  he  "loves  it  as  well  as  his  own 
life  ;  "  *  and  that  this  latter  play,  like  the  '  Pseudolus,' 
appears  to  have  suggested  to  Moliere  some  points  in  his 
'  L'Etourdi.'  One  of  its  scenes  t  has  also  (as  Thornton 
thinks)  been  imitated  bv  him  in  '  Les  Fourberies  de 
Scapin.' 

X. THE    YOUNG   CARTHAGINIAN    (pffiNULUS). 

This  play  has  an  interest  apart  from  any  literary 
merit,  because,  written  as  it  was  during  the  Second 
Punic  War,  it  has  some  Carthaginians  introduced  into 
it.  We  may  conclude  that  the  sketches  were  such  as 
Plautus  judged  likely  to  meet  the  popular  taste;  and 
if  so,  they  are  creditable  to  the  Roman  contemporary 
estimate  of  their  powerful  enemies.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  a  joke  or  two  about  long  trailing  foreign  dresses, 
and  their  being  "pulse-eaters," — just  as  we  used  to  affect 
to  believe  that  Frenchmen  lived  upon  frogs, — and  a 
hit  in  the  prologue  at  the  proverbial  "  Punic  faith," 
which  on  a  Roman's  tongue  meant  Punic  faithlessness, 
there  is  nothing  derogatory  to  their  national  character 

*  Bacch.,  act  ii.  sc.  2.  f  Act  iii.  sc.  3. 


88  THE   COMEDIES   OF  PLAUTUS 

in  this  impersonation  of  the  Carthaginians  by  the  Roman 
dramatist.  The  elder  of  the  two,  who  is  introduced 
under  a  very  historical  name — Hanno — is  a  highly 
straightforward  and  unselfish  character,  who  at  once 
gives  up  to  his  cousin,  Agorastocles,  the  "  young  Cartha- 
ginian," as  soon  as  he  discovers  their  relationship,  the 
property  which  had  been  left  to  himself  by  the  young 
man's  father,  in  the  belief  of  his  son's  death.  Agoras- 
tocles himself  is  neither  better  nor  worse  than  the  Athe- 
nian (or,  as  they  really  are,  Roman)  youths  who  figure 
in  the  comedies.  And  as  for  Adelphasium — Hanno's 
lost  daughter,  with  whom  the  hero  of  the  piece  has 
fallen  passionately  in  love  in  her  position  as  a  slave — 
there  is  more  character  in  her  than  in  any  one  of  the 
heroines  (the  word  must  be  used  because  there  is  no 
other  to  be  found)  of  Plautus  or  of  Terence.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  separate  her  from  the  very  disagreeable  interlo- 
cutors in  the  dialogues  in  which  she  takes  a  part :  but 
the  quiet  way  in  which  she  treats  her  sister's  love  of 
finery,  and  her  half-affected  indifference  to  the  flat- 
teries of  her  lover,  and  disregard  of  all  his  raptures  so 
long  as  he  fails  in  his  promise  of  obtaining  her  freedom, 
mark  her  out  very  distinctly  from  most  of  the  female 
characters  in  Plautus.  There  is  an  amusing  scene  in 
which  her  lover,  finding  that  she  will  not  listen  to  him, 
begs  his  servant  Milphio,  in  whose  rhetorical  powers 
he  feels  more  confidence,  to  plead  his  cause  with  her. 
Milphio  consents  to  do  it — warning  his  master,  at  the 
same  time,  that  he  may  possibly  think  his  ambassador 
too  energetic.  So  the  young  man  list  ens  in  the  back- 
ground, while  Milphio,  speaking  on  his  behalf,  entreatz 
Adelphasium,  in  the  most  approved  style  of  lovers 


THE   YOUNG  CARTHAGINIAN.  89 

language,  to  have  some  pity  upon  his  unfortunate 
master.  He  throws  himself  so  heartily  into  his  com- 
mission, that  the  Carthaginian  listens  to  his  rapturous 
expressions  with  dismay,  and  at  lust  can  endure  it  no 
longer.  He  rushes  forward,  and  seizes  his  ambassador 
by  tho  collar,  wholly  regardless  of  the  presence  of  the 
lady  and  her  sister,  who  look  on  with  much  amusement. 

Agorastodes.  Now  am  I  not  worth  purchase  at   three 

farthings, 
If  I  don't  break  that  scoundrel's  head. — Come  here,  sir  ! 

(seizes  Milphio.) 
There's  for  your  "  sweets," — and   "  dears," — and  "  pretty 

darlings  " — (beats  him  at  ea  h  wonl). 
Here's  "heart's delight"  and  "lovely  charmer"  for  you! 

(beats  him  again.} 

Milphio.  Oh,  master,  master  !  it's  rank  sacrilege  ! 
You're  beating  an  ambassador  ! 

Agor.  I'll  beat  him 

More  yet. — "  Kiss  her  all  day,"  sir,  coulJ  you  ? 
I   daresay  !    (striking  him  again.)      "  Nestling   of  your 

bosom,"  is  she  ? 
Mil.  (roaring  and  rubbing  his  shoulders').  Oh  !  that's 

enough  ! 

Agor.  Was  that  the  fashion,  sirrah, 

In  which  I  meant  you  to  address  the  lady  ? 
Mil.  Why,  what  was  I  to  say,  then  ? 
Agor.  Say,  you  rascal  ? 

Why,  this — "  Light  of  my  master's  eyes — queen  of  his 

soul — 

Breath  of  his  life — joy  of  his  heart," — and  so  on  : 
Instead  of  that,  sir,  in  your  cursed  impudence, 
You've  been  calling  her  your  darling  all  the  time  ! 
Mil.  Oh  !  now  I  see  !   (goes  up  to  Adelphasium,  and 
begins  again.) 


90  THE   COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS. 

I  implore  you,  gracious  madam, — 
Joy  of  his  heart — but  my  abomination — 
Queen  of  his  soul — but  enemy  of  my  ribs — 
His  pet,  my  pest — his  angel,  but  my  devil — 
Light  of  his  eyes — but  black  as  night  to  me — 
Don't  be  so  very  cross  to  him, — if  you  can  help  it. 

Adelphasium,    (laughing  and  turning  au'ay).     Go  hang 
yourself !  you  and  your  master  too  ! 

Mil.  I  shall  lead  a  precious  life  of  it,  I  see,  through  you; 
I've  got  a  back  already  in  your  service 
Whealed  like  an  oyster-shell. 

A  del.  It's  your  own  back 

That  you  think  most  of,  I  suspect ;   not  him, 
Or  how  he  cheats  me  with  deceitful  vtromises. 

"When  Hanno  lias  discovered  that  these  two  sisters  are 
the  long-lost  daughters  in  search  of  whom  he  has 
journeyed  to  Calydon,  he  determines  to  play  upon  their 
feelings  for  a  while — in  the  most  unnecessary  and  un- 
likely fashion — by  pretending  to  them  that  he  merely 
conies  to  claim  them  as  his  slaves.  And  here,  again, 
there  are  little  touches  on  the  part  of  Adelphasium 
which  almost  redeem  the  scene  from  tediousness. 
Hanno  pretends  to  summon  the  girls  before  the  magis- 
trate, in  order  to  prove  his  claim  ;  and  the  lover,  who 
is  present,  and  helps  (though  with  evident  impatience) 
to  humour  the  father's  jest,  asks  him  if  he  shall  at  once 
make  Adelphasium  his  prisoner.  She  has  heard  him 
address  the  stranger  as  his  "  cousin ; "  and  the  fine 
scorn  with  which,  as  she  draws  back  from  his  eager 
arm,  she  exclaims — 

"  Said  you  this  person  \v?s  your  kinsman,  sir  ? " 
could  not  fail  to  be  effective  from  the  lips  of  a  clever 


THE    YOUNG   CARTHAGINIAN.  91 

actress.  So,  too,  when  she  requests  to  know  the  nature 
of  Harmo's  claim  to  her,  and  the  lover,  eager  to  put  an 
end  to  the  equivoque,  says  that  all  shall  be  told  if 
she  will  but  accompany  the  stranger,  she  scornfully 
replies — 

"  What !  does  my  own  dog  bark  at  me  ? " 

it  is  not  difficult  to  sympathise  with  the  young  Cartha- 
ginian's intense  admiration  of  her  as  she  stands  there 
defying  him.  He  vows  that  for  her  sake  Jupiter  would 
soon  "  send  Juno  packing;"  and  when  at  last  she  throws 
her  arms  round  her  father's  neck,  he  laments  that  Apel- 
les  and  Zeuxis  died  too  soon — they  had  never  such  a 
subject  for  their  pencil.  These  are  by  far  the  most 
life-like  pair  of  lovers  in  any  comedy  of  either 
Plautus  or  Terence.  Granted  that  he  is  a  little 
foolish,  and  she  something  of  a  coquette, — that  does 
not  make  the  characters  either  less  natural  or  less 
entertaining. 

Nevertheless,  all  this  absurd  mystification  on  the 
part  of  the  father  does  make  this  scene  tedious,  as  are 
some  others  in  the  play.  Hanno  carries  on  his  heavy 
joke  so  long,  that  at  last  his  young  cousin,  who  is  im- 
patient for  the  recognition  of  his  dear  Adelphasium, 
appeals  to  him  by  pointing  to  the  audience : — 

"  Sir,  cut  it  short— these  gentlemen  are  thirsty." 

There  is  no  symptom  of  relenting  disclosed  on  the 
part  of  Adelphasium  towards  her  suitor,  even  after  her 
true  position  as  a  free-woman  has  been  secured  ;  but, 
as  Hanno  unhesitatingly  promises  her  hand  in  marriage 
to  her  new-found  cousin,  and  daughters  in  the  comic 


92  THE   COMEDIES   OF  PLAUTUS. 

drama  are  very  dutiful  on  such  points,  we  are  left  to 
conclude  that  his  constancy  is  rewarded.  Mr  Dunlop 
— whose  critical  judgment  is  entitled  to  so  much  re- 
spect— has  pronounced  this  to  be  the  dullest  of  all  the 
author's  productions.  Plot  there  certainly  is  none  ; 
and  the  heavy  badinage  of  the  excellent  Hanno  is 
enough  to  put  any  critic  out  of  temper.  But  there 
is  certainly  more  point  in  the  dialogue  than  in  most  of 
the  comedies  of  Plautus. 

The  play  has  a  special  interest  for  scholars,  indepen- 
dently of  any  literary  merit.  It  is  supposed  to  contain 
the  only  existing  specimen  of  the  Carthaginian  language, 
in  which  Ilanno  is  made  to  speak  when  first  he  appears 
upon  the  stage.*  There  are  eighteen  lines  of  it  (some 
of  them,  however,  containing  a  mixture  of  Latin 
words),  besides  a  few  scattered  phrases.  This  philo- 
logical curiosity  has  naturally  much  exercised  the  in- 
genuity of  the  learned.  Scaliger,  Petit,  and  others, 
consider  the  language  to  be  merely  a  variation  of  He- 
brew, and  in  Pareus's  edition  of  Plautus  the  lines  are 
printed  in  Hebrew  characters. ,  Others  have  sought  to 
identify  it  with  Chinese,  Persian,  or  Coptic.  Some 
modern  philologers  incline  to  consider  it  a  mere  un- 
meaning jargon,  invented  by  Plautus  for  the  occasion  ; 
and  the  frequent  admixture  of  Latin  words  and  ter- 
minations in  the  last  lines  of  the  passage  (as  though 
the  writer  were  tired  of  keeping  up  the  farce)  certainly 
lends  some  countenance  to  this  view.  The  vocalisation 
of  some  of  the  words  bears  no  slight  resemblance  to 

*  Act  v.  sc.  1. 


TUE  COMEDIES  OF  PLAUTUS.  93 

Welsh.     But  the  question  of  the  affinities  of  language 
is  not  one  to  be  discussed  here. 


The  remaining  Comedies  may  Vie  dismissed  with  brief 
notice.  The  stock  characters — the  parasite,  the  mili- 
tary swaggerer,  and  the  cunning  slave — reappear  upon 
the  stage  in  very  similar  combinations,  and  in  less 
respectable-  company.  '  Stichus,'  which  is  in  other 
respects  deficient  in  interest,  having  no  plot  whatever, 
and  which  some  authorities  do  not  consider  to  have 
been  written  by  Plautus,  deserves  notice  as  containing 
the  pretty  female  character  of  Pamphila  (or  Pinacium, 
as  she  is  called  in  some  copies),  the  exemplary  young 
wife  who  maintains  her  fidelity  to  her  absent  husband 
in  spite  of  the  strong  probabilities  of  his  death  or  deser- 
tion. In  vain  has  her  father  urged  upon  her  and  his 
other  daughter,  in  accordance,  no  doubt,  with  the  feeling 
of  society  on  such  points,  the  propriety  of  unprotected 
young  women  in  their  circumstances  marrying  again. 
Their  husbands  have  now  been  absent,  ostensibly  on  a 
trading  voyage,  for  above  three  years,  and  have  sent  no 
word  home.  But  Pamphila  will  listen  to  no  such 
suggestion,  and  encourages  her  sister  in  steady  resist- 
ance to  all  temptations  to  such  breach  of  their  first 
vows.  Of  course  both  husbands  return  home  in  due 
time,  enriched  by  the  profits  made  in  their  foreign 
voyages  ;  and  such  is  the  whole  story  of  this  brief  and 
inartistic  drama,  remarkable  only  for  its  pleasant  com- 
p(anion  pictures  of  the  two  young  wives.  Six  more  plays 
make  up  the  list  of  Plautus's  surviving  comedies,  and  if 


04  THE   COMKU1X8  OF    PLAUTOS. 

these  had  not  survived,  we  should  certainly  have  had 
no  lo3S.  Their  names  are  '  Casina ' — which  seems  to 
have  furnished  Buaumaruhais  with  part  of  the  plot  of 
his  '  Mariage  de  Figaro  ' — '  Curculio,'  '  The  Ass-dealer  ' 
(Asinaria),  'The  Churl '  (Truculentus),  'The  Merchant,' 
and  '  The  Persian.'  The  morality  of  all  these  is  of 
the  very  lowest,  and  the  three  last  are  stupid  besides. 


CHAPTER    V. 

TERENCE. 

A  DRAMATIC  generation  elapsed  between  Plant  us  and 
Terence  ;  for  the  latter  Avas  only  ten  years  old  at  the 
date  of  Plautus's  death.  The  great  name  which  filled 
the  interval  in  the  annals  of  Roman  comedy  was  that  of 
Caecilius ;  but  of  his  works  nothing  remains  except  a 
few  disjointed  passages  to  be  found  here  and  there  in  the 
works  of  other  authors.  Horace  mentions  him  with  ap- 
proval, while  Cicero  accuses  him  of  bad  Latin.  Cajcilius, 
too,  was  a  copyist  from  Menander,  and  a  very  indifferent 
copyist  in  the  opinion  of  Aldus  Gellius,  who  gives  us 
an  additional  testimony  to  the  genius  of  the  Greek 
dramatist,  when,  in  comparing  a  passage  from  one  of 
his  lost  comedies  with  the  imitation  of  it  by  C.x-cilius, 
he  says  that  the  difference  in  brilliancy  is  that  of  the 
golden  armour  of  Glaucus  compared  with  the  bronze  of 
Diomed. 

Such  biographical  record  as  we  have  of  Ter- 
ence is  mainly  derived  from  a  source  which  is  very 
apocryphal.  There  is  a  "Life"  of  him,  ascribed  to 
Suetonius,  but  more  probably  written  by  the  gram- 
marian Donatus  :  we  do  not  know  what  authority  the 


•76  TERENCE. 

writer  had  for  his  details,  and  the  anecdotes  which  it 
contains  have  a  suspicious  colouring. 

Though  the  name  by  which  he  is  known — Publius 
Terentius  —  is  Roman,  we  are  told  that  he  was  by 
birth  a  Carthaginian,  whence  came  his  sobriquet 
of  "Afer"  (the  African),  and  that  he  was  eitho/ 
born  in  slavery  or  had  become  a  prisoner  of  w^r. 
He  was  brought  up  in  the  Luus^nold  of  a  Roman 
senator  named  Terentius,  and,  as  was  not  uncommon 
among  slaves  when  they  obtained  their  freedom,  took 
the  name  of  his  patron.  That  under  these  circumstances 
he  should  have  had  a  liberal  education  need  not 
discredit  the  story  ;  for  in  many  Roman  families  we 
know  that  such  young  slaves  as  showed  ability  were 
allowed  amplo  opportunities  of  instruction.  But 
other  opportunities  are  said  to  have  fallen  to  the  lot 
of  Terence  such  as  few  in  his  position  could  have 
hoped  for.  He  was  admitted,  while  yet  a  young 
man,  to  an  intimate  association  with  Scipio  and 
Laelius  ;  and  this  pair  of  accomplished  friends  were 
even  said  to  have  had  a  large  share  in  the  composition 
of  the  dramas  which  were  brought  out  in  the  name  of 
their  humbler  associate.  There  is  a  story  that  Laelius, 
being  one  evening  busy  in  his  library,  and  slow  to 
obey  his  wife's  summons  to  dinner,  excused  himself  by 
saying  he  had  never  been  in  a  happier  mood  for  com- 
position :  and  forthwith  recited,  as  part  of  the  result, 
a  passage  from  what  was  afterwards  known  as  'The 
Self-Tormontor '  of  Terence.  The  dramatist  himself, 
perhaps  very  naturally,  seems  partly  to  have  encouraged 
the  popular  notion  that  lie  enjoyed  such  distinguished 
help ;  for  though  in  his  prolo^*  *  *•  the  comedy  whicfc 


TERENCE.  97 

was  said  to  have  been  really  the  work  of  his  aristocratic 
friend  he  speaks  of  this  report  as  "  a  weak  invention  of 
the  enemy,"  yet  in  the  prologue  to  a  subsequent  drama, 
'The  Brothers,'  he  evidently  treats  it  "as  a  compli- 
ment, and  does  not  care  altogether  to  refute  so  flattering 
an  accusation. 

For  as  to  that  which  carping  tongues  report, 
That  certain  noble  friends  have  lent  their  hand 
To  this  his  work,  and  shared  the  poet's  toil, — • 
What  they  would  fling  at  him  as  a  reproach 
He  counts  an  honour, — to  be  thus  approved 
By  those  whom  universal  Rome  approves.* 

Cicero  thought  it  probable  that  his  illustrious  friends 
did  help  him,  though  it  might  have  been  only  by 
judicious  hints  and  corrections.  It  is  also  more  than 
possible  that  the  dramatist  may  have  been  indebted 
for  much  of  the  refinement  of  his  dialogue,  directly  or 
indirectly,  to  the  accomplished  women  whose  society 
he  enjoyed  in  the  household  of  La?lius.  The  ladies  of 
that  family  were  all  charming  talkers ;  and  Lselia,  the 
eldest  daughter  of  Scipio's  friend,  is  mentioned  by  her 
son-in-law  Crassus,  the  famous  orator,  as  reminding 
him,  in  the  elegance  of  her  language,  of  the  dialogues 
of  Naevius  and  Plautus. 

It  is  said  that  when  he  offered  his  first  play  to  the 
^Ediles,  who  as  the  regulators  of  the  public  games  had 
to  choose  the  pieces  which  were  to  enjoy  the  honour  of 
public  representation,  he  found  the  officer  to  whom  he 
brought  it- to  read  seated  at  table.  The  young  author 
was  desired  to  take  a  stool  at  a  distance,  and  begin  : 
but  he  had  scarcely  got  through  the  opening  passage 

*  Prologue  to  the  Adelphi,  15. 
A.  c.  vol.  xvi.  O 


98  TEREXCR. 

of  'The  Maid  of  Aiulros'  wlien  the  /Edile  motioned 
him  to  a  seat  by  his  own  side,  and  there  the  reading 
was  completed. 

The  six  comedies  which  follow  are  probably  all  that 
their  author  ever  put  upon  the  stage.  In  the  midst  of  his 
dramatic  career,  he  left  Homo  in  order  to  travel  in 
Greece,  and  is  said  during  his  tour  to  have  employed 
himself  in  the  translation  of  upwards  of  a  hundred 
of  Menander's  comedies.  He  seems  never  to  have 
returned,  and  tradition  says  that  he  was  lost  at  sea  on 
his  voyage  homeward,  and  that  his  precious  manu- 
scripts perished  with  him.  Another  story  is  that  he 
himself  escaped  from  the  wreck,  but  died  of  grief  for 
the  loss  of  his  literary  treasures. 

His  plays  have  far  more  elegance,  but  less  action, 
than  those  of  Plautus.  He  is  perhaps  more  adapted 
for  the  library,  and  Plautus  for  the  stage.  Very  much 
of  the  fun  of  the  latter  is  broad  farce,  while  Terence 
seldom  descends  below  parlour  comedy.  But  the  two 
writers  had  moved  in  very  different  circles :  Plautus 
had  been  familiar  with  life  in  the  Suburra — the  St 
Giles's  of  Kouie — while  Terence  had  mixed  in  the 
society  of  the  Palatine.  Their  tastes  had  tin's  been 
formed  in  very  different  schools.  It  is  probable  that 
Terence  gives  us  a  better  notion  of  what  Menander  was 
than  either  Plautus  or  Caecilius.  A  criticism  of  Ctesar 
has  been  already  quoted,  in  which  he  calls  Terence  a 
"  half-Menander."  In  the  same  lines  he  speaks  of  his 
"  pure  diction  "  and  "  smoothness,"  and  regrets  his  de- 
ficiency in  that  lively  humour  ("t>w  comica")  which 
Menander  seems  to  have  succeeded  in  combining  with 


the  Attic  elegance  of  his  style.     There  seems   rnu'.-h 
justice  in  this  criticism. 

The  brief  prologues  with  which  Terence  intro'luceH 
his  plays,  unlike  those  of  Plautus,  contain  no  kind  of 
explanation  of  the  plot.  They  are  personal  appeals 
of  the  poet  to  his  audience,  informing  them  hone.-;tly 
of  the  sources  from  which  he  has  borrowed  his  piece 
(for  to  the  honours  of  original  invention  no  Roman 
dramatist  of  those  days  seerns  to  have  thought  of 
aspiring),  or  defending  himself  against  some  charge  of 
unfair  dealing  brought  against  him  by  his  rivals.  In 
this  respect  they  bear  a  strong  resemblance  to  the 
"  parabasis,"  as  it  was  called,  introduced  here  and  there 
between  what  we  should  call  the  acts,  in  the  old  Attic 
Comedy  of  Aristophanes  aud  Cratinus. 


CHAPTER  VL 

THE    COMEDIES    OF    TERENCES. 
I. — THE  MAID   OF   ANDRO8. 

'  THE  Maid  of  Andros  '  —  the  earliest  in  date  of 
Terence's  comedies  with  which  we  are  acquainted — 
is  confessedly  founded  upon  two  plays  of  Menander, 
his  '  Andria'  and  'Perinthia  ;'  and  the  Roman  dramatist 
tells  us,  in  his  prologue,  how  certain  critics  complained 
that  in  this  adaptation  he  had  spoilt  two  good  pieces 
to  make  a  single  indifferent  one.  How  much  truth  there 
maybe  in  the  accusation  we  cannot  even  guess.  But  there 
seems  to  have  been  generally  a  lack  of  incident  in  the 
comedies  of  his  great  original,  which,  supposing  such 
adaptation  to  be  permissible  at  all,  would  quite  justify 
a  writer  who  had  to  make  his  own  work  effective  in 
supplying  himself  with  sufficient  material  from  as 
many  separate  pieces  as  he  thought  proper.  Even  as  we 
have  the  play,  the  incidents  are  so  few  and  simple,  that 
its  defect,  if  acted  before  a  modern  audience,  would  be 
the  want  of  sufficient  interest  in  the  plot.  A  lady 
named  Chrysis  has  come  from  the  island  of  Andros  to 
Athens,  and  there,  from  lack  of  money  or  friends,  after 


THE  MAID  OF  AXDROS.  101 

a  hard  struggle  to  make  an  honest  livelihood,  has  been 
driven  to  make  a  market  of  her  beauty.  Amongst  the 
visitors  to  her  house,  one  of  the  most  constant  has 
been  the  young  Pamphilus,  who  may  be  considered  the 
hero  of  the  piece.  But,  whatever  the  lady's  reputation, 
the  relations  between  her  and  Pamphilus  have  been  of 
the  most  innocent  kind  :  and  of  this  fact  none  are 
better  convinced  than  his  father  Simo,  and  the  freed- 
nian  Sosia — who  is,  in  spite  of  his  humble  position  in 
the  household,  the  confidential  friend  and  adviser  of 
both  father  and  son.  The  scene  between  Sosia  and  his 
master  gives  us,  as  most  of  these  comedies  do,  a  very 
pleasant  idea  of  the  kindly  relations  which  in  a  well- 
regulated  Roman  household  might  subsist  between  the 
head  of  the  family  and  his  dependants,  even  under  the 
hateful  conditions  of  slavery.  For  we  must  still  re- 
member that,  though  the  scene  is  laid  in  Athens,  the 
words,  and  in  a  great  degree  the  manners  also,  are 
Roman  ;  though  Terence  is  more  careful  on  this  point 
than  Plautus.  Simo  tells  his  freedman  that  he  wants 
his  services  in  a  matter  which  involves  trust  and  secrecy 
— qualities  in  which  he  has  hot  hitherto  found  him 
wanting. 

Simo.   You  know  that,  since  I  bought  you  when  a  boy, 
You  found- me  as  a  master  just  and  kind  ; 
Then  from  a  slave  I  made  you  free  ;  and  this 
Because  you  had  served  me  with  a  free  goodwill ; 
The  greatest  boon  I  had  to  give,  I  gave  you. 

Sosia.  I  don't  forget  it. 

Si.  Nor  do  I  repent  it. 

So.  If  aught  that  I  have  done,  or  can  do,  pleases  you, 
It  is  my  pleasure  :  if  you  thank  me  for  it, 


102  THE  COMEDIES  OF  TEREXCE. 

I  thank  you  for  the  thanks.     But  that  you  name  it 
Troubles  me  somewhat ;  thus  reminding  me 
Seems  half  to  charge  me  with  ingratitude  ; — 
Sir,  in  one  word,  what  would  you  have  me  do  ? 

Simo  will  tell  him.  It  was  true, — there  was  nothing 
between  his  son  and  Chrysis  ;  his  visits  were  really 
not  to  her.  But  Chrysis  died  a  short  time  ago;  and 
Pamphilus,  as  a  mark  of  respect  to  an  old  acquaintance, 
had  followed  amongst  the  mourners  at  her  funeral. 
Simo — one  of  the  many  idle  old  gentlemen  who  were 
wont  to  he  spectators  on  such  occasions  — had  seen  his 
son  actually  wipe  away  a  tear.  He  was  charmed,  he 
tells  Sosia,  at  such  a  mark  of  true  sensibility.  "  If  he 
weeps,  said  I  to  myself,  for  a  person  who  was  a  mere 
common  acquaintance,  what  would  he  not  do  for  me — 
his  father  !  "  Suddenly  a  young  woman,  hitherto  un- 
known, attracted  his  attention  :  of  such  a  ravishing 
beauty  that  the  staid  father  of  the  family  grows  posi- 
tively enthusiastic — rather  to  the  surprise  of  the  discreet 
Sosia — in  his  description.  When  the  corpse  is  laid,  ac- 
cording to  Athenian  custom,  on  the  funeral  pile,  this 
interesting  young  stranger,  in  the  agony  of  her  grief, 
crept  so  close  to  it  as  to  be  almost  caught  by  the  flames  ; 
when  a  young  man  rushed  forward,  clasped  her  in  his 
arms  with  the  tenderest  expressions  of  affection,  calling 
her  his  "  darling  Glycerium,"  and  led  her  off  sobbing 
very  familiarly  on  his  shoulder — quite  as  if  she  was  used 
to  the  situation.  And  this  young  man  wasPamphilus — 
and  his  father  looking  on  with  his  own  eyes  !  He  had 
gone  home,  as  he  tells  Sosia,  in  such  mood  as  might  be 
imagined  after  witnessing  this  outrageous  conduct  in 


THE  HAW  OF  ANDROS.  103 

the  promised  bridegroom  of  his  old  friend's  daughter. 
Yet,  after  all,  he  continues — 

I  had  scarce  ground  enough,  methink?,  to  chide  him  ; 
He  might  reply — "  Have  I  deserved  this,  father  1 
"What  have  I  done  1     Wherein  have  I  offended  1 
She  would  have  thrown  herself  into  the  flames  ; 
I  hindered  it — I  saved  her  life  ! '' — Such  plea 
Sounds  fair  and  honest. 

So.  Marry,  so  it  does  ; 

For  if  you  chide  him  that  would  save  a  life, 
What  will  you  say  to  him  that  seeks  to  take  it  1 

However,  the  father  is  in  great  tribulation.  His  friend 
Chremes  has  heard  of  the  matter,  and  is  told  that 
Pamphilus  is  privately  married  to  this  young  foreigner  ; 
and  very  naturally  declines  any  longer  to  look  upon  him 
as  a  future  son-in-law.  But  Simo  is  determined  to  find 
out  the  truth,  and. to  be  satisfied  whether  his  son  has 
really  got  into  this  disreputable  entanglement.  He 
means  to  pretend  to  him  that  the  marriage  with  Chre- 
mes's  daughter,  so  long  meditated,  is  at  last  finally  settled, 
and  is  to  come  off  at  once,  this  very  evening,  the  day 
originally  named.  Young  men  in  Athenian  society 
must  have  been  usually  very  obedient  to  their  fathers 
in  such  matters  :  for  Simo  has  no  doubt  of  his  son's 
compliance,  unless  he  can  show  good  and  reasonable 
cause  to  the  contrary.  If  this  Andrian  girl  really 
stands  in  the  way,  Pamphilus  will  make  decided  objec- 
tions to  the  being  disposed  of  in  marriage,  and  then- 
then,  this  indulgent  father,  who  evidently  dreads  noth- 
ing so  much  as  having  to  find  fault  with  his  son  at 
all,  will  know  how  to  deal  with  him.  So  Sosia  is 


104  THE  COMEDIES  OF  TEREXCE. 

charged  to  keep  up  the  deception,  and  to  assure  every 
one  that  his  young  master  is  to  be  married  this  very 
evening. 

But,  if  Sosia  justly  enjoys  the  confidence  of  his 
master,  the  young  heir  of  the  house  has  his  confidant 
too.  This  is  a  slave  named  Davus — the  best-known 
representative  in  classical  comedy  of  the  familiar  char- 
acter who  has  been  described  in  a  previous  chapter.* 
He  has  considerably  more  cleverness  than  Sosia,  but 
nothing  of  his  honesty:  except,  indeed,  a  kind  of  span- 
iel-like fidelity  to  his  young  master's  private  interests, 
partly  attributable  to  the  mischievous  pleasure  which 
he  finds  in  thereby  thwarting  the  plans  and  wishes  of 
the  elder  one.  Davus  has  heard  of  this  sudden  re- 
newal of  the  marriage-contract,  and  comes  upon  the 
stage  soliloquising  as  to  how  this  complication  is  to  be 
dealt  with.  His  master  enters  at  the  same  time  on 
the  other  side,  listening. 

Davus.  Ah  !  I  was  wondering  where  all  this  would  end! 
The  master  was  so  quiet,  I  suspected 
He  must  mean  mischief.     When  lie  heard  that  Chremes 
Downright  refused  his  girl,  he  never  spoke 
An  angry  word,  nor  stormed  at  any  of  us. 

iSimo.  (aside  at  the  wing,  sJiaking  his  stick  at  Davus). 
He  will  speak  soon,  and  to  your  cost,  you  rascal ! 

Da.  (still  aside).  So,  so!  he  thought  to  take  us  unprepared, 
Lapping  us  up  in  this  fools'  Paradise, 
To  swoop  upon  us  at  the  last,  too  late 
To  give  us  time  to  think,  or  opportunity 
To  hinder  this  curst  wedding.     (Ironically.)  Clever  man  ! 
Si.  (trying  to  listen).  What  is  he  muttering  ? 

*  See  p.  15. 


.    THE  MAID  OF   ANDROS.  105 

Da.  (discovering  Simo).  Ha  !  my  master  there  ! 

I  had  not  seen  him. 

Si.  (coming  fonoard).  Davits  ! 

Da.  (pretending  not  to  have  seen  him  before).    Hey? 
what  is  it  ? 

Si.  Here,  sirrah,  come  this  way  ! 

Da.  (aside).  What  can  he  want  ? 

Si.  What  say  you  ? 

Da.  What  about  ? 

Si.  D'ye  ask  me,  sirrah  1 — 

They  say  my  son  has  a  love  affair  ? 

Da.  Good  lack ! 

How  folks  will  talk  ! 

Si.  D'ye  mind  me,  sir,  or  no  ? 

Da.  I'm  all  attention. 

Si.  Well — to  inquire  too  closely 

Into  the  past  were  harsh — let  bygones  rest. 
But  now  he  must  begin  a  different  life  ; 
New  duties  lie  before  him  from  this  day  : 
And  you — I  charge  you  (changing  liis  tone) — nay,  indeed, 

good  Davus, 

I  rather  would  intreat  you,  if  I  may, 
Pray  help  to  keep  him  straight. 

Da.  (affecting  snprise.)  Why — what's  all  this  ? 

Si.  Young  men,  you  know,  with  such  whims,  do  not  care 
To  have  a  wife  assigned  them. 

Da.  (carelessly).  So  they  say. 

Si.  Then — if  a  young  man  have  a  knavish  tutor 
Who  trains  him  in  such  courses,  why,  the  evil 
Will  grow  from  bad  to  worse. 

Da.  (looking  stolid).  Hercules  help  me  ! 

I  can't  tell  what  you  mean. 

Si.  (ironically).  No — really  ? 

Da.  No ; 

I'm  only  Davus — I'm  no  CEdipus. 

Si.  You'd  have  me  speak  more  plainly — is  it  so  ? 


106  THE   COMEDIES  OF  TERENCE. 

Da.  Indeed  I  would. 

Si.  Then,  if  I  catch  you  scheming 

To  disappoint  this  match  of  ours  to-day, 
By  way  of  showing  your  own  curst  cleverness, 
I'll  have  you  flogged  within  an  inch  of  life, 
And  sent  to  the  mill — on  this  condition,  look  you — 
When  I  let  you  out,  I'll  go  and  grind  myself. 
•Now,  sir,  d'ye  understand  me  1     Is  that  plain  ? 

Da.  Oh,  perfectly !  (bowing).     You  state  the  case  so 

clearly, 

With  such  entire  correctness  of  expression, 
So  free  from  ambiguity — -it's  quite  charming  ! 

But  Davus  is  not  deterred  "by  these  threats.  He 
meets  Chremes  going  about  with  a  very  gloomy  face, 
not  at  all  like  a  happy  father-in-law  :  he  meets  his  foot- 
boy  coming  home  from  market  with  a  penny  bundle 
of  pot-herbs  and  a  dish  of  sprats — very  unlike  pro- 
visions for  a  wedding-supper.  He  peeps  into  their 
kitchen  ;  no  culinary  preparations  whatever.  More- 
over, there  is  no  music,  as  there  should  be,  before  the 
door  of  the  bride's  house.  He  is  satisfied  that  his 
suspicions  are  correct ;  that  there  is  really  no  wedding 
011  foot,  at  least  for  the  present ;  that  Chremes  still 
firmly  refuses  to  allow  his  daughter  to  marry  a  young 
man  whom  he  believes  to  be  married  already  ;  and  that 
Simo  is  only  using  this  pretended  renewal  of  the  en- 
gagement as  a  test  for  ascertaining  how  matters  really 
stand  between  his  son  and  the  fair  Andrian.  He 
goes  in  search  of  his  young  master  to  acquaint  him 
with  this  discovery,  and  to  advise  him  to  checkmate 
his  father  by  consenting  at  once  to  the  proposed, 
marriage ;  which,  as  there  is  no  bride  forthcoming,  will 


THE  MAID   OF  ANDR08.  107 

evidently  pose  the  old  gentleman  considerably,  "besides 
convincing  him  that  his  son  is  free  from  the  entangle- 
ment which  he  suspects.  There  will  he  a  respite 
gained,  at  any  rate  :  and  in  the  meanwhile,  Davits 
hopes, — "  something  will  turn  up." 

He  finds  Pamphilus  in  a  state  of  great  perplexity, 
and  very  indignant  against  his  father  for  proposing 
to  marry  him  off-hand  at  such  very  short  notice ; 
the  perplexity  not  being  lessened  by  his  Glycerium  pre- 
senting him  with  a  baby  on  this  his  wedding-clay  that 
is  to  be  with  another  lady.  Simo  has  heard  a  report 
of  this  little  stranger's  arrival :  but  he  believes  it  to 
be  a  mere  plot  to  impose  upon  him  and  Chremes,  and 
to  confirm  his  friend  in  his  resolution  to  refuse  his 
daughter. 

Acting  upon  the  advice  of  Davus,  Pamphilus  assures 
his  father  at  their  next  interview  that  he  is  quite  ready 
to  take  the  wife  suggested  to  him.  But  Davus  has 
been  too  clever  by  half.  Simo  goes  straight  to  his 
friend,  assures  him  that  all  is  over  between  Pam- 
philus and  Glycerium,  that  his  son  will  gladly  fulfil 
the  contract  already  made  for  him,  and  begs  of  him, 
by  their  long  friendship,  not  to  refuse  any  longer  a 
connection  which  will  be  for  his  son's  advantage  and 
for  the  happiness  of  all.  Chremes  with  some  reluc- 
tance consents  :  and  in  the  joy  of  his  heart  Simo  calls 
Davus,  to  whose  good  offices  he  thinks  he  is  chiefly 
indebted  for  his  son's  compliance. 

Simo.  Davus,  I  do  confess,  I  doubted  you  : 
I  had  my  i'ear.s  ;  slaves — common  slaves,  I  mean — 
Will  do  such  things, — that  you  were  cheating  me, 
At  to  this  matter  of  my  son's. 


108  THE   COMEDIES  OF  TERENCE. 

Davus.  (ivith  an  air  of  injured  innocence).  I,  master  ! 
could  you  think  it  1  cheat  ? — Oh  dear  ! 

Si.  (soothingly).  Well,    well — I  fancied   so  :  and   with 

that  thought 
I  kept  the  secret  which  I  tell  you  now. 

Da.  What's  that  ? 

Si.  Well,  you  shall  hear  :  for  now  at  last 

I  almost  think  that  I  may  trust  you — may  I  ? 

Da.  At  last,  sir,  it  seems,  sir,  you  appreciate  me. 

Si.  This  wedding  was  a  mere  pretence. 

Da.  (with  feigned  surprise).  No  !  really  ? 

Si.  A  scheme  of  mine,  to  test  my  son  and  you. 

Da.  Indeed ! 

Si.  Yes,  really. 

Da.  Look  ye  !  what  a  wit 

Our  master  has  !  I  never  could  have  guessed  it. 

Si.  Listen  ;  when  I  dismissed  you,  I  met  Chremes— 

Da.  (aside.)  We're  lost — I  know  it. 

Si.  Listen  ;  straight  I  told  him 

What  you  told  me,  that  Pamphilus  was  ready. 
I  begged  and  prayed  that  he  would  give  his  daughter ; 
At  last  I  moved  him. 

Da.  (aside).  Then  I'm  done  for. 

Si.  Hey  !  did  you  speak  1 

Da.  I  only  said  "  well  done,"  sir. 

Si.  And  I  beseech  you,  Davus,  as  you  love  rne, 
Since  you  alone  have  brought  about  this  wedding — 

Da.  1 1  oh  dear,  no  !  pray — 

Si.  For  my  son  I  ask  you, 

Still  do  your  best  to  regulate  his  morals. 

Da.  I  will,  I  will,  sir — trust  me.  [Exit  Chremes. 

(Throws  himself  on  the  ground  and  tears  his  hair.) 

O— h  !  0— h  ! 

I'm  gone — a  thing  of  nought.     Why  don't  I  go 
Straight  to  the  mill-prison  of  myself  ? — Forgiveness  ? 
No  hope  of  that,  from  any  one.     I've  played 


*UE  MAID  OF  ANDROS.  109 

The  very  mischief  with  the  total  household  ; 

Cheated  the  master — got  the  son  a  wife — - 

This  very  night,  much  to  the  ohl  gentleman's 

Astonishment,  and  his  son's  disgust. — Ah  !   well  ! 

This  comes  of  cleverness.     Had  I  held  my  tongue, 

No  harm  had  happened. — Hist !  here  comes  young  master  ; 

(Looking  about.)   Is  there  any  place  here  high  enough,  I 

wonder, 
For  a  man  to  break  his  neck  from  1 

There  is  another  lover  in  the  plot, — which  is  perhaps 
to  our  modern  notions  more  complicated  than  interesting. 
This  daughter  of  Chremes,  to  whom  Pamphilus  has 
been  contracted  by  his  father,  lias  a  favoured  admirer  in 
his  friend  Charinus.  Pamphilus  has  assured  him  that  he 
himself  has  no  aspirations  whatever  in  that  quarter,  in 
spite  of  the  arrangement  between  the  two  fathers  :  and 
the  young  lover  is  naturally  indignant  when  he  dis- 
covers, as  he  thinks,  the  treacherous  part  which  his 
friend  has  played  in  the  matter,  in  now  coining  forward 
to  fulfil  an  engagement  which  he  had  always  professed 
to  repudiate.  There  is  a  spirited  scene  between  the 
two  young  men,  in  which  Pamphilus  at  last  succeeds  in 
convincing  his  friend  of  his  own  unchanged  views  in 
the  matter — he  will  never  marry  the  girl  of  his  own 
free-will.  Poor  Davus  narrowly  escapes  a  thrashing  from 
both,  for  his  unlucky  interference.  He  undertakes, 
however,  if  they  will  but  have  patience  with  him,  to 
set  matters  right  yet  :  and  his  next  step  is  to  persuade 
the  nurse  to  allow  him  to  lay  Glycerium's  baby  down 
at  his  master's  door — a  silent  claim  upon  his  grand- 
father— just  as  Chremes,  full  of  his  daughter's  marriage, 
is  coming  to  call  on  his  old  friend.  Chremes  finds  out 


110  THE  COMEDIES  OF  TERENCE. 

— as  Davus  intends  that  he  should — whose  child  it  is, 
and  is  more  than  ever  indignant  at  the  deception  which 
is  heing  repeated  upon  himself  and  his  daughter.  He 
goes  straight  to  Simo  and  once  more  recalls  his  consent. 
But  meanwhile  a  stranger  has  arrived  at  Athens, 
who  announces  that  this  Andrian  girl  was  really  no 
sister  of  Chrysis,  but  a  free-born  daughter  of  Athenian 
parents,  and  that  therefore  Pamphilus  ~w  11  be  bound 
by  Athenian  law  to  marry  her — if  they  are  not  married 
already.  When  Davus  comes  to  announce  this  news 
to  Simo,  the  old  gentleman's  indignation  at  this  new 
ruse  on  behalf  of  the  conspirators — as  he  thinks  it — 
knows  no  bounds  ;  and  poor  Davus,  who  is  now  speak- 
ing the  truth  for  the  first  time  in  the  whole  business, 
is  for  his  reward  tied  neck  and  heels  by  order  of  his 
irate  master,  and  carried  off  to  prison.  But  the  tale 
is  true.  An  Athenian  citizen  had  been  shipwrecked 
upon  the  island  with  a  little  child  ;  had  died  there, 
and  left  the  infant  to  be  brought  up  by  Chrysis. 
This  shipwrecked  stranger  turns  out  to  have  been 
Chremes's  own  brother,  to  whose  charge  he  had  com- 
mitted his  little  daughter  —  this  Glycerium,  long 
supposed  to  be  drowned,  and  now  restored  to  her 
father.  All  difficulties  are  over ;  Pamphilus  shall  yet 
be  son-in-law  to  Chremes — only  the  bride  is  Glycerium, 
not  Philumena.  The  latter  young  lady,  who  never 
makes  her  appearance,  and  whose  charms,  like  those  of 
Glycerium,  must  be  taken  on  report  by  the  audience,  is 
with  dramatic  justice  handed  over  to  her  lover  Charinus. 
Davus  is  released;  he  comes  in  rubbing  his  neck  and 
legs,  which  are  still  suffering  from  the  very  uncomfort- 
able kind  of  stocks — a  veritable  "  little-ease  " — which 


THE  MOTUER-IN-LAW.  Ill 

the  Eomans  used  to  punish  their  slaves,  hut  too  good- 
humoured  and  light-hearted  not  to  rejoice  in  the  re- 
stored harmony  of  the  family.  He  concludes  the  piece 
hy  hegging  the  audience  not  to  expect  an  invitation 
to  the  weddings,  which  will  take  place,  he  assures  them, 
quite  privately.* 

• 

II. THE    MOTHER-IX-LAW. 

The  plot  of  'The  Mother-in-law,'  though  it  is  an 
extremely  pretty  play,  and  its  moral  excellent,  turns 
upon  incidents  which  would  justly  offend  the  reticence 
of  modern  manners.  Here  it  can  only  he  sketched 
generally.  A  young  wife,  hut  a  few  months  married  and 
of  really  irreproachahle  character,  fancies  that  she  has 
so  fatally  compromised  herself  with  her  hushand  under 
circumstances  in  which  she  was  really  not  to  blame, 
that  in  his  absence  she  leaves  the  roof  of  his 
father  and  mother,  with  whom  she  has  been  living 
since  her  marriage,  and  takes  refuge  with  her  own 
parents.  Laches,  her  father-in-law,  a  choleric  and 
despotic  personage,  fancies  that  his  Avife  Sostrata,  the 
"  mother-in-law,"  must  necessarily  be  the  cause  ;  al- 
though that  gentle  and  kindly  woman  lias  really  a 
sincere  affection  for  the  runaway,  to  Avhom  she  has 
always  shown  every  kindness.  The  scolding  which 
Laches  inflicts  upon  his  wife  in  one  of  the  early  scenes 
of  the  play,  Avill  serve  to  show  how  little  originality 

*  Upon  this  play  Michel  Baron,  the  French  dramatist,  founded 
his  comedy  of  '  L'Andrienne,'  the  two  first  acts  bein<,r  little  more 
than  a  translation.  Steele's  '  Conscious  Lovers '  is  also  bor- 
rowed from  it. 


112  THE  COMEDIES  OF   TERENCE. 

there  is  in  those  conjugal  dialogues  which  have  always 
been  so  popular  an  ingredient  in  modern  farce.  If 
humour  of  this  kind  cannot  be  said  to  be  in  the  very 
best  taste,  it  may  at  least  claim,  a  high  classical-  an- 
tiquity. 

Ladies.  Good  heavens  !  what  a  strange  race  these  women 

are ! 

They're  all  in  a  conspiracy  !  all  just  alike, 
In  what  they  will  and  what  they  won't ;  not  one  of  'em 
But  sings  to  the  same  note  ;  with  one  consent 
Each  stepmother  detests  her  daughter-in-law, 
Each  wife  is  hound  to  contradict  her  husband  ; 
There  must  be  some  school  where  they  all  learn  wicked- 
ness ; 
And  my  own  wife  must  be  head-mistress  in  it. 

Sostrata.    Poor  me,  poor  me  !    I  don't   know  what   I 
am  charged  with  ! 

La.  {sneering}.  Oh  !  you  don't,  don't  you  ? 

Sos.  On  my  life,  dear  Laches, 

No — as  I  hope  to  live  and  die  with  you  ! 

La.  The  gods  deliver  me  from  such  a  prospect  ! 

Sos.  (sobbing).  Well,  when  I'm  gone,  you'll  know  how 
cruel  you've  been. 

La.  Cruel,  forsooth  !  what  words  are  strong  enough 
For  your  base  conduct,  madam  ?     You've  disgraced 
Me,  and  yourself,  and  all  the  family ; 
You've  ruined  your  son's  happiness — made  enemies 
Of  our  best  friends,  who  gave  their  daughter  to  us. 
'Tis  you,  and  only  you,  have  done  it  alL 

80$.  I ! 

La.  Yes,  you,  madam  !    What !  am  I  a  stone  ? 

Have  I  no  feelings,  think  you  1     Do  you  fancy 
Because  lam  in  the  country,  I  don't  know 
How  you  all  go  on  here  while  I  am  away  ? 
Ay  !  better  than  I  know  what  goes  on  there. 


THE  MOTHER-IN-LAW.  113 

Your  conduct,  madam,  makes  me  common  talk. 
I  knew  my  son's  wife  hated  you — yes,  long  ago  ; 
No  wonder — 'twould  be  a  wonder  if  she  didn't. 
But  that  for  your  sake  she  had  taken  a  hatred 
To  the  whole  family, — this  I  did  not  know. 
Had  I  only  known  it,  I'd  have  packed  you  off, 
And  made  her  stay — I  would  indeed,  my  lady  ! 
Look  how  ungrateful,  too,  is  this  behaviour  ; 
All  to  please  you,  I  take  a  place  in  the  country  ; 
1  work  like  a  horse  there — more  than  at  my  years 
I  ought  to  do — to  keep  you  here  in  idleness, 
Spending  my  money  ;  'twas  the  very  least 
You  might  have  done,  to  keep  a  quiet  house. 

Sos.  'Twas  not  my  fault,  indeed,  indeed,  dear  Laches  ! 

La.  I  say  it  was  your  fault,  and  no  one  else's  ; 
You'd  nought  to  do  but  make  things  pleasant  here  ; 
I  took  all  other  burdens  off  your  hands. 
Shame  !  an  old  woman  like  you  to  go  and  quarrel 
"With  a  poor  girl ! — You'll  tell  me  now,  'twas  her  fault  1 

/Sos.  No,  no  !  dear  Laches,  I  have  never  said  so 

La.  Well,  I  am  glad,  for  my  son's  sake,  you've  the  grace 
To  confess  that.     You  don't  much  harm  yourself 
By  the  confession  ;  in  your  precious  character 
A  fault  or  two  the  more  don't  make  much  odds. 

You  mothers  never  rest  until  your  sons 

Get  them  a  wife  ;  and  then  your  whole  delight 

Is  to  make  mischief  between  wife  and  husband. 

Some  of  the  scenes  in  this  play  are  the  most 
dramatic  of  any  which  have  come  down  to  us  from 
the  author's  hands.  The  grief  of  the  young  husband 
when,  on  his  return  from  a  voyage  on  business,  he 
finds  that  his  wife  has  left  his  father's  roof  and  gone 
home  to  her  own  parents,  and  when  she  refuses  him  an 

A.  c.  vol.  xvi.  H 


114  THE   COMEDIES  OF  TERENCE. 

interview  on  the  plea  of  illness  ;  when  he  believes 
that  there  is  some  cause  of  quarrel  Avhich  is  concealed 
from  him  between  her  and  his  mother,  Avhom  he  dearly 
loves  ;  and  the  struggle  between  his  love  for  his  wife, 
and  his  sense  of  what  is  due  to  his  own  honour,  when 
he  learns  the  real  cause  of  her  withdrawal,  are  all  very 
finely  drawn.  So  are  the  little  passages  in  which  poor 
Sostrata,  still  believing  that  the  cause  of  Pbilumena's 
estrangement  is  some  unaccountable  dislike  which  she 
has  taken  to  herself,  though  conscious  that  she  has 
done  her  best  to  make  her  a  happy  home,  proposes  to 
give  up  her  pleasant  town-house  and  retire  into  the 
country,  and  so  leave  the  young  pair  to  themselves. 
Laches  himself  is  touched  at  last  by  her  simple  and 
unselfish  goodness  ;  and  though  the  indications  of  this 
are  slight  in  the  Roman  play,  compared  with  the  fuller 
and  more  gradual  development  which  would  be 
thought  necessary  in  a  modern  comedy,  there  is  in  the 
short  scene  between  them  a  simple  pathos  which,  when 
the  characters  were  played  by  good  actors,  no  doubt 
touched  the  feelings  of  the  audience  as  it  was  meant 
to  do. 

La.  Well,  well  ;  we'll  go  into  the  country  ;  there 
You'll  have  to  bear  with  me,  and  I  with  you. 

Sos.  (throwing  her  arms  round  lier  husband  and  sobbing). 

Husband,  I  hope  we  may  ! 
La.  {disengaging  himself  awkivardly,  and  trying  to  hide 

his  emotion).     There,  there  ! — go  in  ; 
(Jet  ready  all  you  want — I've  said  the  word. 

Sos.  I'll  do  your  bidding — aye,  and  gladly. 

Pampliilus  (who  lias  entered  unperceii'ed).  Father  ! 

La.  Well,  Pamphilus,  what  is  it  ? 


THE  MOTHER-IN-LAW.  115 

Pam.  What  means  this  1 

My  mother  leave  her  home  ?     It  must  not  be. 

La.  Why  not  ? 

Pam.  Because  I  am  not  yet  resolved 

As  to  my  wife. 

La.  You  bring  her  back,  of  course. 

Pam.  I  wish  it — it  is  hard  to  give  her  up  ; 
But  I  must  do  that  which  I  feel  is  best. 
She  and  my  mother  will  be  friends — apart. 

La.  You  can't  tell  that.     Besides,  what  matters  it  ? 
Your  mother  will  be  gone.     (Turns  away  from  his  son, 

who  tries  to  interrupt  him.)    We're  getting  old — 
We're  only  troublesome  to  younger  folk ; 
We'd  best  be  moving  on.     (Turning  again  to  Pamphilus 

with  a  smile.}     In  short,  my  boy, 
We're  only  "  the  old  man  and  woman,"  now. 

But  everything  is  made  right  in  the  end.  Philu- 
mena  goes  back  to  her  husband  a  wife  without 
reproach,  and  we  are  allowed  to  hope  that  Laches  did 
not  wait  for  Sostrata's  death  to  repent  of  his  injustice 
to  her  character.  The  dramatist  had  not  altogether  lost 
his  pains,  if  he  had  done  something  to  qualify  the 
vulgar  notion  of  a  "  mother-in-law."  The  play  appears 
to  have  met  with  no  success  when  first  brought  out, 
for  it  has  come  down  to  us  with  a  "second  prologue," 
written  for  what  seems  to  have  been  its  third  repre- 
sentation, in  which  the  author  takes  the  opportunity 
to  remark  on  its  previous  failures.  He  attributes  these 
in  both  cases  to  the  more  powerful  attractions  of  the 
rope-dancers  and  the  gladiators.  On  the  second  oc- 
casion the  audience  were  so  impatient  for  the  appear- 
ance of  these  latter,  that  they  would  not  even  sit  out 
the  comedy. 


116  '111 E  COMEDIES  OF   TERENCE. 


III. THE    SELF-TORMENTOR. 

The  comedy  of  'The  Self -Tormentor '  is  in  great 
measure  borrowed,  as  well  as  its  Greek  name  of  '  Heau- 
ton-timorumenos,'  from  a  lost  comedy  of  Menander,  of 
which  we  have  but  some  ten  lines.  It  has  very  much 
the  same  kind  of  dramatis  pergoncB  as  the  preceding 
play.  Two  fathers  and  two  sons, — a  young  lady  for 
each,  and  a  scheming  slave,  devoted  to  the  interests  of 
his  young  master — make  up  the  leading  characters. 
Ohremes  and  Menedemus,  the  fathers,  have  for  the  last 
few  months  been  neighbours  in  the  country ;  engaged, 
as  Roman  gentlemen  who  preferred  a  country  life  com- 
monly were,  in  farming ;  an  occupation  in  which  it 
must  be  confessed  they  were  generally  much  more  suc- 
cessful than  the  average  English  squire.  Chromes  has 
noticed  that  since  Menedemus  bought  his  present  farm, 
he  has  worked  upon  it  himself  from  morning  till  night, 
as  hard  as  though  he  were  a  slave  instead  of  a  master; 
in  fact,  that  he  does  more  work  than  any  of  his  slaves, 
and  that  the  time  which  he  spends  himself  in  manual 
labour  might,  so  far  as  the  interests  of  the  farm  are  con- 
cerned, be  much  more  profitably  employed  in  looking 
after  them.  He  has  no  reason  to  suppose  that  his 
neighbour  is  poor ;  and  he  has  a  curiosity  to  learn  the 
secret  of  this  "  self- tormenting."  He  succeeds  in  doing 
so  in  the  opening  scene,  though,  not  without  some  diffi- 
culty. Menedemus  gruffly  expresses  his  surprise  that 
his  neighbour  should  have  so  much  leisure  from  his 
own  affairs  as  to  concern  himself  about  those  of  others. 


THE  SELF-TORMENTOR.  117 

Chremes  makes  answer  in  those  famous  words,  which 
can  only  be  inadequately  given  in  any  English  trans- 
lation ;  words  at  which,  as  St  Augustine  tells  us,  the 
whole  audience,  though  many  of  them  rude  and  ignor- 
ant, broke  out  into  thunders  of  applause  : — 

"  I  am  a  man  ;  nothing  in  human  life 
Can  fail  to  have  its  interest  for  me."  * 

Menedemns  then  tells  him  that  he  had  once  (he  almost 
fears  he  can  no  longer  say  he  has)  an  only  son,  who 
had  fallen  in  love  with  a  y  jung  Corinthian  stranger 
of  humble  fortunes,  who  had  come  to  Athens  (the 
"  Maid  of  Andros,"  in  fact,  under  another  title),  and 
had  wished  to  marry  her.  The  father's  pride  had  re- 
fused to  consent ;  almost  any  marriage  with  a  foreigner 
was  held,  it  must  be  remembered,  to  be  a  mesalliance 
for  a  citizen  of  Athens.  '  He  had  spoken  harshly  to  his 
son ;  and  the  young  man,  not  choosing  to  be  so  dealt 
with,  had  entered  upon  that  field  of  adventure  which 
was  open  in  those  times  to  all  young  men  of  spirit : 
he  had  taken  service  with  a  body  of  mercenaries, 
and  gone  to  seek  his  fortunes  in  the  East.  Distracted 
at  the  consequences  of  his  own  severity,  and  the  loss 
of  a  son  whom  he  deeply  loved,  Menedemus  had  sold 
his  house  in  Athens,  and  retired  into  the  country,  de- 
termined to  punish  himself  for  what  he  considers  his 
unnatural  harshness  by  a  life  of  rigid  asceticism.  He 
will  live  no  life  of  ease  after  driving  his  son  into  exile 
and  poverty  ;  whatever  lie  can  save  by  self-denial  shall 

*  "Homo  sum  ;  human!  nihil  a  me  alienum  puto." 


118  THE   COMEDIES   OF    TERENCE. 

be  saved  for  him  at  his  return — if  ever  that  happy  day 
should  come. 

It  conies  with  the  very  next  scene.  Young  Clinia 
has  returned  from  the  wars,  and  lias  just  been  received 
into  the  house  of  Chremes — introduced  there  by  his 
son,  Clitipho,  who  had  been  an  intimate  friend  of  the 
wanderer,  though  the  father  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
aware  of  it.  Clinia  has  begged  his  friend  to  send  at 
once  to  his  dear  Antiphila,  and, — if  she  has  been  as 
faithful  to  him  in  his  absence  as  he  hopes, — to  entreat 
her  to  pay  him  a  visit  in  his  temporary  domicile.  And 
now  the  complication  begins.  Syrus, — the  slave  to 
whom  young  Clitipho  intrusts  his  friend's  errand,  his 
confidant  in  all  business,  lawful  or  unlawful — deter- 
mines to  take  the  opportunity  of  doing  his  young 
master  a  special  kindness.  Clitipho  has  also,  as 
Syrus  is  well  aware,  a  love  affair  of  his  own  upon  his 
hands,  with  a  very  dashing  and  extravagant  lady  in- 
deed, to  gratify  whose  expensive  tastes  iu  the  way  of 
presents  he  has  already  taxed  his  father's  good-nature 
to  the  uttermost.  Syrus  has  hit  upon  the  brilliant 
idea  of  introducing  this  lady  into  his  master's  house- 
hold as  a  visitor,  instead  of  the  modest  and  quiet 
Antiphila,  as  the  object  of  Clinia's  affections  ;  that 
Clitipho  may  thus  enjoy  the  pleasure  of  a  few  days  in 
her  society.  Antiphila  meanwhile  is  sent  into  the 
ladies'  apartments — which  were  quite  distinct  from 
the  other  rooms  in  the  house — there  to  be  entertained 
by  Sostrata,  Chremes's  wife.  How  Clinia  is  brought 
to  consent  to  an  arrangement  which  would  give 
him  very  little  opportunity  for  interviews  with  his 
dear  Antiphila — or  how  husband  and  wife,  in  such  a 


THE  SELF-TORMENTOR.  119 

modest  establishment  as  this  seems  to  have  been,  could 
each  have  entertained  a  young  lady  guest  for  some 
days  (as  seems  to  have  been  contemplated  by  Syrus) 
without  each  other's  knowledge,  is  not  so  clear  as  it  might 
be.  But  even  on  our  modern  stage  we  are  continually 
obliged,  if  we  go  to  be  amused,  to  swallow  glaring 
improbabilities  ;  and  to  expect  to  criticise  the  Athenian 
or  the  Roman  stage  by  the  light  of  our  modern  ignor- 
ance, is  an  occupation,  perhaps,  more  tempting  than 
profitable. 

The  hospitable  Chremes  is  somewhat  astonished  at 
the  ways  of  the  dashing  lady  to  whom — all  to  oblige 
his  son's  friend — he  has  given  shelter.  He  meets 
Menedemus  the  next  morning,  and  warns  him  in  a 
friendly  way  that  Clinia's  wife  that  is  to  be  seems  an 
extremely  fast  young  person. 

Cftr.  First,  she's  brought  with  her  half  a  score  of  maids, 
Tricked  out,  the  jades,  with  gold  and  jewellery ; 
Why,  if  her  lover  were  an  Eastern  prince, 
He  couldn't  stand  it — how  011  earth  can  you  ? 

Men.  (jnildly)    Oh  !  is  she  here,  too  ? 

Chr.  Is  she  here,  do  you  ask  ? 

(Ironically}.  Oh  yes  ! — she's  here.     There's  no  doubt  as 

to  that. 

I  know  it  to  my  cost.     They've  had  one  dinner, 
She  and  her  party.     If  I  give  another 
Such  as  last  night,  why — I'm  a  ruined  man. 
She's  very  curious,  mind  you,  as  to  her  wines  ; 
Knows    the    best    brands, — and    drinks    them.     "  Ha  ! " 

she'd  say, 

"  This  wine's  not  dry  enough,  old  gentleman — 
"  Get  us  some  better,  there's  a  dear  old  soul ! " 
I  h<vl  to  tap  my  oldest  casks.  My  servants 


120  THE  COMEDIES  OF  TEREXCE. 

Are  driven  almost  wild.  And  this,  remember, 
Was  but  one  evening.  What's  your  son  to  do, 
And  you,  my  friend,  that  will  have  to  keep  her  always  ? 

Men.  Let  him  do  what  he  will :  let  him  take  all, 
Spend,  squander  it  upon  her  ;  I'm  content, 
So  I  may  keep  my  son. 

Chremes  sees  that  it  is  impossible  to  argue  with  the 
remorseful  father  in  these  first  moments  of  his  son's 
return.  But  it  will  be  a  very  dangerous  thing  for 
young  Clinia  to  know  that  his  father  is  thus  offering 
him  carte  llancJie  for  all  his  own  and  his  mistress's  ex- 
travagances. He  therefore  begs  his  friend,  instead  of 
openly  supplying  the  money,  to  allow  himself  to  be 
made  the  victim  of  a  kind  of  pious  fraud.  The  amount 
of  expenditure  for  the  present  may  not  be  of  so  much 
importance,  provided  the  son  is  not  led  to  believe  that 
he  has  unlimited  command  of  his  father's  purse. 
Chremes  will  manage  that  the  supplies  required  for 
the  lady's  demands  shall  be  drawn  from  Menede- 
mus  on  some  specious  pretext.  He  has  evidently  a 
great  fancy  for  transacting  other  people's  business  ;  for 
though  he  has  an  arbitration  case  which  he  ought  to 
attend  to-day,  he  will  go  and  have  it  put  off,  that  he 
may  have  time  to  arrange  this  matter  for  his  friend. 
The  happy  father  willingly  consents,  and  is  all  impa- 
tience to  be  cheated. 

Syrus  meanwhile  is  racking  his  wits  to  know  how 
he  is  to  get  money  for  his  young  master  to  lavish  upon 
the  extravagant  Bacchis.  In  this  mood  his  elder 
master  meets  him  ;  and  knowing  him  to  possess  the 
talent  for  intrigue  and  deception  which  is  common  to 
his  class,  asks  his  help  to  impose  some  tale  upon 


THE  SELF-TORMENTOR.  121 

Menedemus — whom  he  affects  to  abuse  as  a  covi'tmis 
old  wretch " — in  order  to  make  liim  a  little  more 
liberal  to  his  unfortunate  son,  \vhom  lie  has  once 
already  driven  from  home  by  his  harshness.  "  That  poor 
young  man  ought  to  have  had  some  clever  servant." 
S:iys  Chremes,  "  who  would  have  managed  the  old 
gentleman  for  him."  Syrus  is  astonished,  as  he  may 
well  be,  at  such  a  proposal  from  such  a  quarter ;  but 
it  suits  his  own  purpose  exactly. 

Syr.  Oh  !  I  can  do  it,  sir,  if  you  insist — 
I  have,  methinks,  some  modest  gii'ts  that  way. 

Chr.  Egad  !  so  much  the  better. 

Syr.  I'm  not  used. 

To  so  much  lying — but 

Chr.  Do  it — you'll  oblige  me. 

Syr.  But  hark  ye,  sir,  remember  this,  I  pray  you  ; 
In  case — I  say  in  case — men  are  but  men — 
Your  son  should  get  in  some  such  scrape  hereafter. 

Chr.  That  case  won't  happen,  I  trust. 

Syr.  ^Xv>  heavens  fort-fend  ! 

I  trust  so  too.     Don't  think,  because  I  mention  it, 
That  I  have  any  suspicion — not  the  slightest ; 
But  still — he's  young,  you  see — such  things  will  happen  ; 
And  if  they  should  (bowing},  I  shall  know  how  to  act, 
By  following  your  excellent  instructions. 

Chr.  (laughing).   Well,  well ;    we'll   see   to    that,    my 

worthy  Syrus, 
When  the  day  comes  ;  now  go  about  this  business. 

[Exit  Chremes. 

Syr.  I  vow  I  never  heard  my  master  talk 
More  to  the  purpose — never  had  I  before 
Free  leave  and  licence  given  to  be  a  rascal  ! 

The   behaviour  of  his  young   guests  is  somewhat 


122  THE  COMEDIES  OF  TEREXCE. 

puzzling  to  Chremes,  though  he  is  quite  unsuspicious 
as  to  the  real  state  of  affairs.  Clinia  and  the  supposed 
object  of  his  affections  conduct  their  love-passages  in 
the  most  calm  and  decorous  fashion  ;  but  young 
Clitipho,  to  the  great  annoyance  of  his  father,  who 
understands  what  is  right  and  proper  under  such  cir- 
cumstances, insists  upon  thrusting  his  company  upon 
them  on  all  occasions.  He  naturally  grudges  his 
friend  all  the  tete-drt&tes  with  his  own  beloved  Bacchis, 
which  his  good-natured  father  is  so  anxious  to  secure 
for  them.  Clinia  does  not  seem  to  mind  these  inter- 
ruptions on  the  part  of  his  friend  ;  but  Chremes  is 
indignant  at  his  son's  want  of  ordinary  tact  and  good 
manners,  especially  as  he  has  detected  little  acts  of 
glaring  flirtation  between  him  and  Bacchis,  which 
seem  to  imply  gross  disloyalty  to  his  friend.  He 
taxes  him  with  this  in  an  amusing  scene,  in  the 
presence  of  Syrus,  who  is  much  alarmed  lest  his  young 
master's  want  of  self-command  should  lead  to  the  detec- 
tion of  the  imposture  ;  for  he,  too,  has  seen  him  very 
distinctly  toying  with  Bacchis's  hand.  Both  of  them 
beg  him  to  go  and  leave  the  young  couple  to  themselves. 

Clitiplio  Qielplessly).  Where  shall  I  go,  sir  ? 

Syrus.  Go  ?  why,  bless  my  life, 

Go  anywhere — only  leave  them — go  for  a  walk. 

Clit.  Where  shall  I  walk  to  1 

Syr.  Zounds  !  why,  anywhere — 

There's  plenty    of    walks — go  this  way — that   way — any 
way. 

Chremes.  The  man's  quite  right,  sir, — go. 

Clit.  (moving  off  gloomily).  Well,  then — I'm  going. 
(Shaking  his  fist  at  Syrus  as  he  goes.} 


Till:  SELF-TORMKNTOR.  123 

Devil  take  you,  rascal,  for  your  interference  ! 

Syr.  (aside  to  kirn}.  You  keep  your  hands  to  your.-e'f. 
young  man,  hereafter.     (Watching  him  as  he  //'»> 
off  with  apparent  interest,  and  turning  to  Chrtnit*.) 
Indeed,  sir,  he's  too  bad.     "What  will  lie  come  to  ? 
You  had  best  give  him  very  serious  warning, 
And  keep  him  tight  in  hand. 

Ckr  I  will,  I  will. 

Syr.  Before  it  is  too  late. 
Clir.  I  will,  I  say. 

Syr.  I  hope  you  will,  sir.     As  for  my  advice, 
(Shrugging  his  shoulders.}  He  minds  it  less  and  kss,  I 
grieve  to  say. 

Chremes's  wife  has  meanwhile  made  the  discovery, 
by  the  common  test  of  a  family  ring,  that  the  girl 
Antiphila  is  a  long-lost  daughter  whom  she  had  sent 
away  immediately  after  her  birth,  in  obedience  to  her 
husband's  threats  that,  in  case  one  should  be  born 
to  him,  he  would  never  bring  up  such  a  troublesome 
addition  to  his  family.  This,  of  course,  makes  every- 
thing clear  for  Clinia's  marriage  with  her  ;  and  that 
young  gentleman  is  accordingly  made  happy,  by  the 
consent  of  all  parties.  But  not  before  the  busy  Chremes 
has  been  hoisted  with  his  own  petard,  by  Syrus's 
contrivance.  Acting  very  much  upon  the  principle 
recommended  to  him  by  his  master  himself,  the  cunning 
rascal  has  extracted  from  him  fifty  pounds  as  an  im- 
aginary ransom  for  his  own  daughter  Antiphila,  whom 
he  declares  to  have  been  purchased  in  her  infancy  by 
Bacchis  :  and  the  gold  is  actually  sent  to  that  lady  by 
the  hands  of  his  own  son.  There  is  some  complication 
in  this  part  of  the  plot,  fairly  amusing  as  worked  out 


124  THE   COMEDIES  OF   TERENCE. 

in  detail  in  the  original,  but  not  worth  analysis.  It 
is  very  long  before  Chremes  can  be  brought  to  believe 
that  it  is  his  own  son,  and  not  Clinia,  who  is  the  real 
lover  of  the  dashing  young  lady  whom  he  lias  been 
entertaining  out  of  complaisance,  as  he  considered, 
to  his  son's  friend.  Men ed emus,  no  longer  a  "  self- 
tormentor,"  is  equally  gratilied  to  find  that,  after  all, 
he  is  to  have  such  a  modest  and  highly  respectable 
daughter-in-law,  and  amused  at  the  collapse  of  his 
scheming  friend. 

JMENEDEMUS  (solas,  laughing  to  himsdf}. 

I  don't  profess  myself  to  be  a  genius — 
I'm  not  so  sharp  as  some  folk — that  I  know  : 
But  this  same  Chremes — this  my  monitor, 
My  would-be  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend, — 
He  beats  me  hollow.     Blockhead,  donkey,  dolt, 
Fool,  leaden-brains,  and  all  those  pretty  names— 
They  might  suit  me  ;  to  him  they  don't  apply  : 
His  monstrous  fully  wants  a  name  to  itself. 

Poor  Chremes  grows  very  crestfallen  in  the  closing 
scenes,  when  he  looks  forward  to  the  ruin  which  his 
son's  extravagant  tastes,  with  the  fair  Bacchis's  assist- 
ance, will  bring  upon  him.  Menedemus  retorts  upon 
him  his  own  advice, — not  to  be  too  hard  upon  his 
son — young  men  will  be  young  men:  but  Chremes 
fails  to  take  the  same  philosophical  view  of  his  own 
case  as  he  had  done  of  his  friend's.  He  vows  at  first 
that  he  will  disinherit  his  young  prodigal,  and  settle 
all  his  property  upon  his  new-found  daughter  and  her 
husband  ;  but  he  is  persuaded  at  last  to  alter  this 
determination. 


THE  ETHIOPIAN  SLAVE.  ll'o 

Clitipho  promises  on  his  part  to  give  up  Earehis 
altogether,  and  take  to  wife  at  once  a  neighbour's 
daughter,  a  most  unobjectionable  young  lady — upon 
whom,  with  the  facile  affections  of  such  young  gentle- 
men, he  seems  to  have  had  an  eye  already. 

IV. THE    ETHIOPIAN    SLAVE. 

The  comedy  of  'The  Ethiopian  Slave,'  which  is 
partly  taken,  as  the  author  tells  us  in  his  prologue, 
from  Menander,  introduces  to  us  once  more,  under 
another  name,  our  old  friend  Pyrgopolinices  of  Plau- 
tus.  Captain  Thraso,  who  has  fought — or  who  says  he 
has  fought — under  Seleucus  in  the  East,  and  his  toady 
Gnatho,  are  the  most  amusing  characters  in  the  play. 
The  plot  is  more  simple  and  well-defined  than  is  usual 
in  these  comedies ;  and  though  it  must  be  modified 
a  little  to  suit  either  these  pages  or  an  English  stnge, 
it  will  not  suffer  much  from  such  treatment.  This 
Thraso, — a  rich  braggart,  who  takes  Gnatho  about  with 
him  everywhere  to  act  as  a  kind  of  echo  to  his  senti- 
ments and  to  flatter  his  vanity, — -is  one  of  the  suitors 
of  a  lady  named  Thais,  who  prefers  a  young  gentle- 
man named  Phsedria,  though  she  does  not  care  to 
discard  altogether  her  rich  lover.  Poor  Phsedria  is  in 
despair,  when  the  play  opens,  at  having  been  refused 
admittance  when  he  called  on  the  lady  the  day  before, 
because,  as  he  understood,  "  the  Captain  "  was  with 
her.  His  slave  Parmeno,  who  is  much  more  of  a 
philosopher  than  his  master,  gives  him  the  very  sensi- 
ble advice  to  keep  away  altogether  for  a  little  while, 
when,  if  Thais  really  cares  for  him,  she  will  soon  call 


126  THE   COMEDIES  OF  TERENCE. 

him  back.  It  is  advice  which  lie  is  not  very  willing  to 
follow,  until  Thais  herself  entreats  him  to  do  some- 
thing of  the  same  kind.  She  has  particular  reasons 
at  this  moment  for  not  wishing  to  offend  the  Captain, 
lie  has  just  made  her  a  very  handsome  present, — a 
slave-girl  of  exceeding  beauty.  But  this  is  not  her 
value  in  her  new  owner's  eyes.  Thais  discovers  that 
this  poor  girl,  whom  the  Captain  has  bought  in  Caria, 
and  brought  home  with  him,  was  a  child  whom  her 
mother  had  brought  up,  and  who  had  bien  to  herself 
as  a  younger  sister.  The  story  was,  however,  that  she 
had  been  originally  stolen  by  pirates  from  the  coast  of 
Attica,  Upon  her  mother's  recent  death,  the  brother 
of  Thais,  intent  only  upon  gain,  had  sold  this  girl — 
well-educated  and  very  beautiful  —  once  more  into 
i^lavtjry  ;  and  so  she  had  come  into  the  hands  of  Thraso. 
Thais — who,  though  a  heartless  flirt  of  the  worst  de- 
scription, still  has  her  good  points — is  anxious  to  rescue 
her  old  companion,  and,  if  possible,  to  restore  her  to 
her  friends,  to  whom  she  hopes  she  has  already  found 
some  clue.  She  fears  that  if  her  military  lover  believes 
her  to  prefer  Phiedria — as  she  assures  that  young  gen- 
tleman she  really  does — he  will  break  his  promise, 
and  not  give  her  this  girl.  Phaedria,  who  has  him- 
self just  sent  her  a  present  of  a  pair  of  Ethiopian 
slaves,  consents,  under  many  protests  :  he  will  not  call 
again  "  for  two  whole  days  : "  he  will  go  into  the 
country  :  but  Parmeno  tells  him  that  he  fully  believes 
he  "  will  walk  back  to  town  in  his  sleep."  The  im- 
passioned words  in  which  the  lover  takes  his  unwilling 
leave,  begging  Thais  not  to  forget  him  when  in  the 
company  of  his  rival,  have  always  been  greatly  admired, 


THE  ETHIOPIAN  SLAVE.  \  '27 

and  often,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  imitated. 
Addison,  in  the  '  Spectator,'  calls  them  "  inimitably 
beautiful  : " — 

Be,  in  his  presence,  as  though  absent  still  ; 
Still  love  me  day  and  night  ;  still  long  fur  me  ; 
Dream  of  me,  miss  me,  think  of  rue  alone  ; 
Hope  for  me,  dote  on  me,  be  wholly  mine, 
My  very  heart  and  life,  as  I  am  thine. 

— Act  i.  sc.  2. 

Gnatho  is  deputed  by  his  magnificent  friend  to  con- 
duct the  young  slave  girl  to  Thais's  house.  On  the  way 
he  is  met  by  Parmeno  :  and  even  that  unimpressible  old 
servitor  is  struck  by  the  girl's  wondrous  beauty.  The 
scene  between  the  two  officials  of  the  rival  powers  is 
very  good. 

Gnatho  (to  himself  as  Parmeno  comes  up).    I'll  have  a 

little  sport,  now,  with  this  knave. 
(Aloud,  making  a  low  bow.)  My  excellent  Parmeno,  is  it 

you? 

Your  most  obedient. — How  d'ye  find  yourself  ? 
Parmeno  (coolly).  I  hadn't  lost  myself, 
Gna.  You  never  do.* 

Nothing  unpleasant  in  this  quarter — eh  ? 

(Pointing  over  his  shoulder  to  Thais's  house.) 
Par.  There's  you. 
Gna.  That  I  can  fancy.     Nothing  else  ? 


*  This  is  not  the  literal  joke  in  the  original,  but  may  serve 
to  express  it.  Colruan  quotes  an  illustration  of  the  same  kind  of 
humour  from  'The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  : ' — • 

"  Falstaff.    My  honest  lads,  I'll  tell  you  wliat  I  am  alout. 
Pistol.   Two  yards,  or  more." 


128  THE   COMKDISS  OF   TERENCE. 

Par.  What  makes  you  ask  ? 

Gna.  You  look  so  glum. 

Par.  (sulkily}.  Not  I. 

Gna.  Don't — I  can't  bear  to  see  it.     But  this  girl, 
(  Whispering)  The   Captain's    present, — what   d'ye  think 
of  her  ? 

Par.  (affecting  to  eye  her  carelessly}.    Oh !  she's  not  bad. 

Gna.  (aside).  I've  hit  my  friend  on  the  raw. 

Par.  (overhearing  4iim}.  Oh  no,  you  haven't ! 

Gna.  But  you  must  surely  think 

That  Thais  will  be  pleased  with  our  new  offering  ? 

Par.  You've  cut  us  out,  you  mean  ?  Well — wait  a  while; 
Your  turn  to-day — it  may  be  ours  to-morrow. 

Gna.  For  some  six  months,  I  promise  you,  Parmeno, 
You  shall  have  rest — no  running  to  and  fro 
With  notes  and  messages  ;  no  sitting  up 
Till  late  at  night  to  wait  for  your  young  master  ; 
Isn't  that  a  comfort  ?     Don't  you  feel  obliged  to  me  ? 

Par.  Oh,  vastly ! 

Gna.  Well — I  like  to  oblige  my  friends. 

Par.  Quite  right. 

Gna.          But  I  detain  you — perhaps  you've  business  ? 

Par.  Oh,  not  at  all ! 

Gna.  Be  so  good  then,  if  you  please, 

To  introduce  me  here — you  know  the  party. 

Par.  Oh  !  such  fine  presents  introduce  themselves — 
They're  your  credentials. 

Gna.  (as  the  door  opens}.  Could  I  take  a  message  ? 

[Parmeno  makes  no  reply,  and  Gnat/to  goes  in  with 
tJie  slave-girl. 

Par.  (shaking  his  fist  after  him}. 
Let  me  but  see  two  days  go  by,  my  friend — 
But  two  short  days,  I  say — and  this  same  door, 
That  opens  now  to  your  lightest  finger-tap, 
You  may  kick  at  all  day,  till  you  kick  your  legs  off. 

— Act  ii.  sc.  2. 


THE  ETHIOPIAN  SLAVE.  129 

As  he  goes  homewards,  Parmeno  meets  the  younger 
son  of  his  master's  family, — CLserea,  an  officer  in  the 
City  Guard.  He  is  in  a  great  state  of  excitement, 
raving  to  himself  ahout  some  young  heauty  whom  he 
had  seen  in  the  street  on  his  way  from  guard,  and  fol- 
lowed for  s^ine  time,  but  has  suddenly  lost  sight  of. 
The  family  servant  is  in  despair,  for  he  knows  the  tem- 
perament of  the  young  soldier.  Phsedria,  the  elder 
brother,  is  inflammable  enough  in  such  matters ;  but  his 
is  mere  milk-and-water  passion  compared  with  Chaerea's. 
It  is  love  at  first  sight,  in  his  case,  with  a  vengeance. 
He  confides  his  whole  story — a  very  short  one — to  Par- 
meno ;  reminds  him  of  all  the  tricks  they  played 
together  when  he  was  a  boy;  how  he  used  to  rob  the 
housekeeper's  room  to  bring  his  friend  in  the  servants' 
hall  good  things  for  supper :  and  how  Parmeno  had 
promised  what  he  would  do  for  him  when  he  grew  up  to 
be  a  man.  Parmeno,  with  the  usual  inclination  of  his 
class  to  oblige  his  young  master  in  such  matters,  asks 
him  some  questions  about  this  interesting  stranger:  and 
from  Chserea's  description  of  her  companions — Gnatho, 
and  a  maid-servant — and  the  fact  of  her  Laving  disap- 
peared somewhere  in  this  little,  by-street,  he  conies  to 
the  conclusion  that  she  can  be  no  other  than  the  beauti- 
ful slave-girl  whom  he  has  just  seen  pass  into  the  house 
of  Thais.  He  begs  Chserea  to  discontinue  his  pursuit: 
the  object  is  unworthy  of  him.  But  when  the  young 
officer  learns  that  Parmeno  knows  who  she  is,  and 
where  she  is  to  be  found,  he  becomes  still  more  eager 
in  his  quest.  At  last  Parmeno  suggests  a  possible 
mode  of  introduction — if  Chserea  likes  to  black  his 
face,  and  change  clothes  with  the  Ethiopian  whom  1m 

A.  c.  voL  xvL 


130  THE  COMEDIES  OF  TERENCE. 

brother  is  going  to  send  as  a  present  to  Thais,  he, 
Parmeno,  who  has  instructions  to  convey  the  pair  to 
her  house  on  this  very  day,  will  venture  to  introduce 
Chaerea  in  this  disguise.  He  makes  the  proposal,  as  he 
declares,  more  in  jest  than  earnest:  but  the  young 
man,  as  may  be  supposed,  catches  at  it  eagerly,  and  in- 
sists upon  it  being  carried  at  once  into  execution. 

The  next  act  of  the  play  opens  with  a  highly 
amusing  scene  between  the  Captain  and  his  obsequious 
friend.  Thraso  wishes  to  know  how  the  lady  has 
received  his  present. 

,Thraso.  I  say — was  Thais  very  much  obliged? 

Gnatho.  Immensely. 

Thra.  She  was  really  pleased,  you  think  ? 

Gna.  Not  with  the  gift  so  much  as  that  you  gave  it ; 
'Tis  that  she's  proud  of. 

Thra.  I've  a  happy  way — 

I  don't  know  how — but  everything  I  do 
Is  well  received. 

Gna,  I've  noticed  it  myself. 

Thra.  Yes.     Even  the  King  himself,  after  an  action, 
Would  always  thank  me  in  person.     'Twas  a  thing 
He  never  did  to  others. 

Gna.  Well,  with  gifts  like  yours, 

A  man  gets  double  credit,  while  poor  souls 
Like  us  work  hard,  with  nobody  to  thank  us. 

Thra.  Egad,  you  have  it ! 

Gra.  Ah !  no  doubt  his  Majesty 

Had  his  eye  on  you,  always. 

Thra.  Well,— he  had. 

I  may  tell  you — I  was  in  all  his  secrets — 
Had  the  whole  army  under  me,  in  fact. 

Gna,  (with  deep  interest}.  No — really  ! 


THE  ETHIOPIAN  SLAVE.  131 

Thra.  Yes.     And  then,  when  he  was  tired 

Of  seeing  people,  or  grew  sick  of  business, 
And  wanted  to  unbend  him,  as  it  were, — 
You  understand  ? 

Gra.  I  know — something,  you  mean, 

In  what  we  call  the  free-and-easy  line  ? 

Thra.  Just  so — he'd  ask  me  to  a  quiet  dinner. 

Gna.  Indeed!  his  Majesty  showed  fine  discernment. 

Thra.  That's  just  the  man  he  is — one  in  a  thousand — 
There  are  few  like  him. 

Gna.  (aside).   Very  few,  I  fancy, 
If  he  could  stand  your  company.* 

Thraso  goes  on  to  rebate  to  his  friend  some  of  the 
excellent  jokes  which  he  made  during  the  time  he  ^a- 
joyed  this  intimacy  with  royalty ;  jokes  at  which  the 
parasite  (who  was  paid  for  it  in  good  dinners)  laughs 
more  perhaps  than  the  reader  would.  Here  is  a  speci- 
men. 

Thraso.  Did  I  ever  tell  you 

How  I  touched  up  the  Rhodian  once  at  dinner  ? 

Gna.  Never  !  pray  tell  me — (aside)  for  the  hundredth 

time. 
Thra.  This  youth  was  dining  with  us  ;  as  it  chanced, 

*  A  fragment  preserved  by  Athenseus  from  a  lost  comedy 
of  Menander — '  The  Flatterer '  —from  which  this  play  is  partly 
taken,  has  the  following  passage.  [Bias  is  the  original  of 
Thraso,  and  Strouthias  is  his  "flatterer."] 

Bias.  I  have  drunk  off,  in  Cappadocia,  Strouthias, 
A  golden  goblet  that  held  full  ten  quarts — 
And  three  times  filled. 

Strouthias.  Why,  sir,  you  must  have  drunk 

More  than  the  great  King  Alexander  could ! 

Bias.  Well — perhaps  not  less — by  Pallas,  no ! 

Sir.  Prodigious ! 


132  THK   COMEDIES  OF  TEREXCE. 

There  was  a  lady  there,  a  friend  of  mine ; 

He  made  some  joke  about  it;  "What,"  said  I — 

"Wha»,  you  young  puppy,  have  you  learnt  to  bark?" 

Gna.  {laughing).  Ha,  ha, — ho,  ho !  O  dear  ! 

Tkra.  You  seem  amused. 

Gna.   (roaring  still  louder).  Oh !  good  indeed!  delicious ! 

excellent ! 

Nothing  can  beat  it! — Tell  me  now,  though,  really — 
(Vas  that  your  own?     I  thought  it  had  been  older? 

Tkra.  (somewhat  disconcerted,.  What? — had  you  heard 
it? 

Gna,.  Often  ;  why,  it's  reckoned 

The  best  thing  out. 

Thra.  {complacently).  It's  mine. 

— Act  iii.  sc.  1. 

The  new  Ethiopian  slave,  Phaedria's  gift,  is  intro- 
duced by  Parmeno,  and  even  Thraso,  who  is  present,  is 
obliged  to  confess  that,  black  man  as  he  is,  he  is  a  very 
good-looking  young  fellow.  Parmeno  assures  them 
that  his  person  is  his  least  recommendation  ;  let  them 
test  his  accomplishments  in  literature,  in  music,  in 
fencing — they  will  find  them  such  as  will  make  him  a 
most  valuable  addition  to  a  lady's  retinue.*  And  Par- 
meno hopes  that  Thais  will  show  a  little  kindness  to 
his  young  master  in  return  for  his  well-chosen  present; 
which,  however,  in  the  Captain's  presence,  she  will  by 
no  means  profess  herself  inclined  to  do. 

But  this  new  servitor  soon  causes  a  terrible  scandal  in 

*  "  Violet.   I'll  serve  this  duke ; 
Thou  shalt  present  me  as  an  eunuch  to  him: 
It  may  be  worth  thy  pains  ;  for  I  can  sing, 
And  speak  to  him  in  many  sorts  of  music." 

—Twelfth  Night,  act  i.  sc.  2. 


THE  ETHIOPIAN  SLAVE.  133 

the  household.  Before  morning  it  is  discovered  that 
the  fair  slave  whom  Thraso  had  so  recently  presented 
to  Thais  has  eloped  with  the  Ethiopian.  The  virtuous 
indignation  of  every  waiting-gentlewoman  in  the  estab- 
lishment is  roused  by  such  an  outrageous  breach  of  all 
the  proprieties,  and  they  rush  on  the  stage  with 
voluble  outcries — "  Eloped  !  and  with  a  black  man  !  " 
A  friend  of  Chserea's  has  been,  considerably  astonished 
at  meeting  him  hurrying  along  the  street  in  a  strange 
costume  and  with  his  face  blacked ;  but  the  young 
man  makes  him  his  confidant,  and  obtains  from  him 
a  change  of  clothes.  Phsedria, — who,  as  his  slave 
Parnieno  had  foretold,  has  found  it  impossible  to  re- 
main even  two  days  in  the  country  away  from  the 
object  of  his  affections,  and  who  has  returned  to  the 
city  and  is  lingering  about  Thais's  door,— hears  the 
story,  and  goes  off  to  his  own  house  to  see  if  anything 
has  been  heard  there  of  the  fugitives.  He  finds  the 
real  Ethiopian  hidden  there  in  Chserea's  clothes,  and 
hauls  him  off,  under  a  shower  of  blows,  to  be  cross- 
examined  by  Thais  and  her  domestics.  But  they  all 
agree  that  this  is  not  at  all  like  their  Ethiopian,  who 
was  a  much  better-looking  fellow  :  and  Phaedria  extracts 
at  last  from  the  terrified  man  that  this  is  some  trick, 
which  promises  to  have  serious  consequences,  of  his 
madcap  brother's. 

The  Captain  meanwhile  has  quarrelled  with  Thais, 
believing  that  after  all  she  prefers  Phsedria  to  himself ; 
and  not  altogether  satisfied  with  the  private  interviews 
which  she  has  lately  been  holding  with  a  young  gentle- 
man from  the  country — a  somewhat  rustic  sort  of  per- 
sonage, but  whom  Thais  seems  for  some  reason  to  treat 


134  THE  COMEDIES  OF   TERENCE. 

with  very  marked  attention.  As  niggardly  as  he  is 
jealous,  Thraso  comes  to  demand  back  again  from  his 
lady-love  the  expensive  present  he  has  made  to  her, — 
this  young  slave,  whom  it  is  not  agreeable  or  convenient, 
for  more  reasons  than  one,  for  Thais  to  give  up.  She 
flatly  refuses  ;  and  Thraso  determines  to  take  her  from 
the  house  by  force.  The  "  young  man  from  the  country," 
who  is  at  this  moment  paying  a  visit  to  Thais,  is  really 
the  brother  of  this  girl,  who  has  been  stolen  in  her  in- 
fancy; and  Thais  now  calls  upon  him  to  stand  by  her 
in  defence  of  his  sister.  He  would  much  prefer  to  go 
and  fetch  the  police  ;  but  there  is  little  time  for  that, 
for  Thraso  is  seen  approaching  with  a  party  of  followers, 
and  Thais,  who  with  all  her  faults  has  plenty  of  spirit, 
barricades  her  door  and  defies  him. 

The  scene  must  have  been  sufficiently  effective, 
especially  if  artistically  arranged,  upon  so  wide  a  stage, 
when  the  gallant  Captain  leads  his  forces  to  the  attack. 

Enter  THRASO,  with  his  sword  drawn,  at  the  head  of  a 
motley  retinue  of  hangers-on  and  household  slaves. 

Thra.  You,  Donax,  with  the  crow-bar,  lead  the  centre ; 
Simalio,  you  command  on  the  left  wing ; 
Syriscus,  you  the  right.     Bring  up  the  reserve  ! 
Where's  our  lieutenant,  Sanga,  and  his  rascals  ? 
They  can  steal  anything — from  a  loaf  to  a  woman. 

Sanga.  Here,  Captain,  here  am  I  ! 

Thra.  Why,  zounds  !  you  dolt, 

Have  you  come  out  to  battle  with  a  dish-clout  ? 

San.  Brave  sir,  I  knew  the  mettle  of  my  Captain — 
I  knew  his  gallant  men  ;  this  fight,  quoth  I, 
May  not  be  without  blood — I'll  stanch  the  wounds. 

Thra.  (looking  round  doubtfully  on  his  troops). 
Where  are  the  rest  of  ye  ? 


THE  ETHIOPIAN   SLAVE.  135 

S<m.  Rest  ?  we're  all  here-- 

We've  only  left  the  scullioii  to  keep  house. 

Tkra.  (to  Gnatho}.  Form  them  in  line  ;   my  post  is  in 

the  rear  ; 
Thence  will  I  give  command,  and  rnle  the  fight. 

Gna.  (half-aside  to  the  others).  Most  admirable  tactics  ! 

we  to  the  front  ; 
He  takes  the  rear-guard — to  secure  retreat. 

Thra.  It  was  the  plan  great  Pyrrhus  always  practised. 

— Act  iv.  sc.  7 

Thais  soon  discovers,  as  she  says,  that  the  champion 
whom  she  has  called  in  as  her  protector  has  more  need  of 
a  protector  himself — for  he  is  a  fair  match  for  Thraso  in 
cowardice.  However,  he  plucks  up  spirit  enough  to 
threaten  that  gallant  officer,  from  the  safe  vantage  of 
an  upper  window,  with  all  the  terrors  of  Athenian 
law,  if  he  ventures  to  lay  a  hand  upon  his  sister  Pam- 
phila — a  free-born  woman  of  Athens,  as  he  openly 
asserts  her  to  he  ;  and  since  Thraso,  somewhat  daunted 
by  this  double  peril,  confines  his  hostile  operations  to 
a  battle  of  words,  the  lady  and  her  party  very  naturally 
get  the  best  of  it.  By  the  advice  of  Gnatho — who 
has  also  more  appetite  for  dinners  than  for  fighting — 
the  Captain  determines  to  await  the  surrender  of  his 
enemy,  which  Gnatho  assures  him  will  follow  next  day, 
and  withdraws  his  army  ;  reminding  his  lieutenant, 
the  cook,  that  for  him,  as  for  all  good  soldiers,  as  there 
is  a  time  to  fight,  so  also 

"  There  is  a  time  to  think  of  hearth  and  home ; " 
a  sentiment  which  Sanga  fully  reciprocates — 

"  My  heart  has  been  in  the  stew-pan  long  ago  ;  * 


136  THE  COMEDIES  OF  TERENCE. 

and  which,  appealing  to  their  business  and  their  bosoms, 
the  whole  body  cheer  vociferously  as  they  move  off'. 

There  is  not  much  worth  notice  in  the  comedy  after 
this  scene.  If  this  girl  Pamphila,  whom  Chaereu 
has  carried  off,  is  really  an  Athenian  citizen,  as  she 
is  soon  proved  to  be,  there  is  no  difficulty  as  to  his 
marrying  her,  and  he  does  so  with  his  father's  full 
consent.  Indeed  we  are  allowed  to  suppose  that  the 
quiet  old  gentleman,  as  well  as  the  trusty  Parmeno, 
must  have  been  glad  to  see  such  a  scapegrace  respect- 
ably settled  in  any  way.  Pha3dria  and  the  Captain  are 
left  rivals  for  the  good  graces  of  Thais  as  before,  but 
Gnatho  contrives  to  patch  up  the  quarrel  between  them 
for  the  present ;  doing  this  good  office,  as  he  assures 
them,  from  the  most  unimpeachable  motives — his  own 
personal  interest,  inasmuch  as  he  hopes  to  get  many  a 
dinner  from  both  of  them. 

This  is  said  to  have  been  the  most  popular  of  all 
the  author's  productions ;  he  received  for  it  from  the 
^Ediles  (who  had  to  provide  the  dramatic  entertain- 
ments for  the  people)  something  like  sixty  pounds. 
Not  a  large  sum,  but  more,  it  is  said,  than  had  been 
paid  for  any  comedy  before.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  the  ancient  theatres  were  open  only  at  festivals, 
for  a  few  days  at  a  time,  and  therefore  no  piece  could 
have  a  long  "  run,"  as  on  the  modern  stage.* 

*  Upon  this  comedy  were  founded  '  Le  Muet '  of  Brneys, 
'  L'Eunnque '  of  Fontaine,  and  Sir  Charles  Sedley's  '  Bellamira.' 
It  has  furnished  Shakspeare  with  a  quotation  which  he  puts  into 
the  month  of  Tranio,  in  the  'Taming  of  the  Shrew,'  act  L  sc.  1, — 
"  Redime  te  captnm  quam  qneas  minimo."  Johnson,  however, 
thinks  that  he  went  no  farther  for  it  than  Lilly's  Grammar. 


rnoRMio.  137 

V. PHORMIO. 

The  play  called  '  Phormio '  is  taken  also  from  a 
Greek  original,  not,  however,  by  Menander,  but  by 
Apollodorus,  a  prolihc  writer  of  the  same  school. 
Here  the  principal  character  is  the  parasite — Phormio  ; 
a  fellow  with  an  enormous  appetite,  consummate  im- 
pudence, a  keen  eye  to  his  own  interest,  and  a  not 
over -scrupulous  conscience,  but  by  no  means  a  bad 
heart  He  and  the  slave  Geta  have  between  them 
all  the  brains  which  carry  on  the  plot ;  for  these  gilded 
youth  of  Athens,  who  .are  the  lovers  in  these  comedies, 
are  not,  it  will  be  observed,  more  largely  furnished  in 
this  particular  than  their  modern  successors,  and  the 
fathers  are  commonly  the  easy  prey  of  the  adroit  and 
unscrupulous  slave  who — from  pure  love  of  mischief, 
it  would  seem,  and  often  at  the  risk  of  his  skin- — as- 
sists the  young  heir  in  his  attack  upon  the  paternal 
purse.  The  respectable  victims  in  this  play  are  two 
brothers — Chremes  and  Demipho — who  have  both 
gone  abroad  on  business,  and  left  their  sons  under  the 
guardianship  of  Geta,  the  confidential  slave  of  the 
younger  brother.  Their  confidence  is  not  very  well 
repaid.  The  youths  give  the  old  man  so  much  trouble, 
that  he  soon  grows  tired  of  asserting  an  authority 
which  in  his  position  he  has  no  means  of  enforcing  ; 
in  fact,  as  he  complains  in  the  opening  scene,  his  wards 
lay  the  whip  about  his  back  whenever  lie  interferes. 
He  finds  it  more  to  his  interest  to  humour  them  in 
everything  to  the  top  of  their  bent.  And  it  has 
come  to  this ;  that  Pliaedria,  the  son  of  Chremes,  has 
taken  a  fancy  to  a  little  music-girl  whom  he  insists  on 


138  THE  COMEDIES  OF  TERKNCE. 

ransoming  from  her  rascally  master,  who  of  course 
raises  his  price  to  an  exorbitant  figure  as  soon  as  he 
finds  out  the  young  gentleman's  infatuation.  Antipho, 
his  cousin,  had  for  a  long  time  given  promise  of  great 
steadiness  :  but  these  still  waters  run  deep,  and  he 
plunges  all  at  once  into  a  romantic  passion  for  a  beauti- 
ful Cinderella,  whom  he  discovers  with  bare  feet  and 
in  a  shabby  dress,  mourning  over  a  dead  mother  who 
has  left  her  a  portionless  orphan.  And,  finding  that 
she  is  of  free  birth,  he  actually  marries  her.  His 
acquaintance  Phorniio  —  whose  friendship  is  at  any 
young  man's  service  who  can  give  a  good  dinner — has 
suggested  to  him  a  plan  by  which  he  may  in  some 
degree  escape  his  father's  anger  at  this  very  imprudent 
match.  There  is  a  law  at  Athens  which,  like  the  old 
Levitical  law,  obliges  the  next  of  kin  who  is  available 
to  marry  an  orphan  of  the  family.  Phormio  under- 
takes to  appear  before  the  proper  court  on  behalf  of 
the  girl,  and  to  bring  evidence  that  Antipho  is  her 
nearest  unmarried  male  relative  :  and,  since  the  young 
lover  of  course  makes  no  attempt  to  disprove  it,  the 
court  gives  judgment  that  he  is  to  make  her  his  wife, 
which  he  does  forthwith. 

All  this  has  taken  place  before  the  action  of  the 
piece  begins.  And  now  a  letter  has  arrived  from 
Demipho  to  say  that  he  is  coming  home,  and  both  the 
son  and  Geta  are  in  great  alarm  as  to  how  he  will  take 
the  news  which  awaits  him.  Antipho,  like  others  who 
have  married  in  haste,  is  beginning  to  feel  something 
very  like  repentance  at  leisure  ;  he  feels,  he  says,  in 
the  position  of  the  man  in  the  proverb  who  has  "  got 
a  wolf  by  the  ears — he  can  neither  hold  her  nor  let 


PHORMIO.  139 

her  go."  Geta  is  conscious  that  he  has  no  very  satis- 
factory account  to  render  of  his  stewardship,  and  lias 
prophetic  visions  of  the  stocks  and  the  mill-prison. 
The  son  has  made  up  his  mind,  by  Geta's  advice,  to 
meet  his  father  with  something  very  much  like  bluster  ; 
but  the  moment  the  old  gentleman  makes  his  actual 
appearance,  his  courage  evaporates,  and  he  makes  off, 
leaving  his  cousin  Phsedria,  with  Geta's  assistance,  to 
make  such  apologies  on  his  behalf  as  they  can. 

The  father's  indignation,  though  it  does  not  spare 
either  Geta  or  Antipho,  is  chiefly  directed  against  the 
parasite  Phormio, — this  disreputable  Mentor  of  youth, 
who  has  trumped  up  such  an  imposture.  But  Phormio 
is  equal  to  the  occasion ;  indeed,  his  nature  is  rather 
to  rejoice  in  these  kind  of  encounters  with  his  angry 
dupes,  in  which  he  feels  confident  his  natural  audacity 
and  shrewdness  will  carry  him  through.  "  It  is  a 
tough  morsel,"  he  says — drawing  his  metaphor  from 
his  familiar  sphere  of  the  dinner-table — "  but  I'll 
make  a  shift  to  bolt  it."  Geta,  who  regards  him  with 
a  kind  of  respectful  envy,  as  a  knave  of  higher  mark 
than  himself,  wonders  how,  considering  all  the  more 
than  doubtful  transactions  he  has  been  engaged  in,  he 
has  hitherto  escaped  the  meshes  of  the  law. 

Phormio.  Because,  my  friend,  no  fowler  spreads  his  net 
For  hawk  or  kite,  or  such-like  birds  of  prey ; 
'Tis  for  the  innocent  flock,  who  do  no  harm ; 
They  are  fat  morsels,  full  of  juice  and  flavour, 
Well  worth  the  catching.     Men  who've  aught  to  lose, 
Such  are  in  danger  from  the  law ;  for  me — 
They  know  I've  nothing.      "  Nay,  but  then,"  you'll  say, 
u  They'll  clap  you  up  in  jail."     Oh  !    will  they  ?     Ah  ! 


HO  THE  COMEDIES  OF  TERENCE. 

(Laughing  and  patting  himself.}   They'd  nave  to  keep  me 

— and  they  know  my  appetite.* 
No — they're  too  wise,  and  not  so  self-denying. 
As  to  return  me  so  much  yood  for  evil. 

The  father  has  taken  the  precaution  to  provide  him- 
self with  no  less  than  three  lawyers  to  back  him  in  his 
interview  with  Phormio.  It  must  he  remembered  that 
all  interviews,  even  of  the  most  private  character, 
according  to  the  conventionalities  of  the  classic  stage, 
take  place  in  the  public  street.  Should  this  seem  to 
shock  our  notions  of  the  fitness  of  things,  we  have  only 
to  remember  the  absurd  anomalies  of  our  own  attempts 
at  realistic  scenery, — where  the  romantic  forest  which 
forms  the  "  set "  at  the  back  has  a  boarded  floor  and  a 
row  of  footlights  in  the  front.  Phormio  and  Geta  see 
their  adversaries  coming  round  the  corner  of  the  street, 
and  at  once  engage  in  a  spirited  controversy  between 
themselves,  purposely  intended  for  the  other  party  to 
overhear.  Phormio  professes  to  be  shocked  at  the  want 
of  common  honesty  on  the  part  of  his  friend's  father. 
What !  will  he  really  repudiate  the  connection  ]  disown 
his  excellent  relative  Stilpho  (which  is  the  name  of  the 
pretty  Phanium's  father),  merely  because  he  died  poor  1 
Well !  what  will  not  avarice  lead  to  !  Geta,  like  a 
faithful  servant,  defends  the  character  of  his  absent 
master :  and  the  pair  appear  to  be  coming  to  actual 
blows  on  the  question,  when  Demipho  steps  forward 
and  interrupts  them.  Phormio  meets  the  old  gentle- 

*  The  creditor,  both  at  Athens  and  at  Rome,  though  he  had 
the  right  to  imprison  a  debtor  who  failed  to  pay,  was  bound  to 
maintain  him  while  in  confinement. 


PHORMIO.  HI 

man's  remonstrances  with  perfect  coolness.  It  is  no 
use  to  tell  him,  that  a  man  does  not  remember  his  first 
cousin ;  Demipho  has  evidently  a  convenient  memory. 
If  poor  old  Stilpho  had  left  a  large  fortune  behind 
him,  he  would  have  routed  out  the  whole  family  pedi- 
gree. If  he  is  .not  satisfied  with  the  award  of  the 
court,  he  can  appeal,  and  have  the  cause  tried  over 
again.  But  law,  he  must  remember,  is  an  expensive 
luxury ;  his  own  advice  would  be,  that  Demipho 
should  try  to  make  himself  comfortable  with  his  new 
daughter-in-law — who  is  really  a  very  nice  young  per- 
son. If  ha  turns  her  out  of  his  house,  he,  Phormio, 
as  her  father's  friend,  will  feel  it  to  be  his  duty  to 
bring  an  action  against  him.  And  so  he  wishes  him  a 
very  good-morning. 

When  Demipho  turns  to  his  legal  friends  for  advice, 
he  scarcely  finds  wisdom  in  the  multitude  of  coun- 
sellors. For  these  counsellors  by  no  means  agree.  The 
first  delivers  it  as  his  opinion  that  what  the  son  did  in 
such  a  matter,  in  the  absence  of  the  head  of  the  family, 
is  void  in  law.  The  second  holds  that  the  judgment  of 
the  court  cannot  now  be  overruled,  and  that  it  would 
not  be  for  Demipho's  credit  to  attempt  it.  The  third, 
the  oldest,  and  as  cautious  as  the  most  doubting  of 
English  Lord  Chancellors,  wishes  to  take  time  to  con- 
sider. So  the  client  dismisses  them,  each  with  their 
fee,  declaring  that  their  valuable  advice  has  left  him 
more  bewildered  than  ever.* 

*  This  scene  with  the  three  lawyers  seems  to  have  given 
Moliere  the  hint  for  several  scenes  in  which  he  has  introduced 
legal  consultations, — e.g.,  in  'Le  Mariage  Forc^,'  sc.  ix., 
where  he  makes  Sganarelle  say,  "L'on  est  aussi  savant  a  la 


142  THE  COMKDIKS  OF  TERENCE. 

Young  Phsedria  adds  to  G  eta's  troubles  by  coming 
to  beg  him  to  extract  from  his  uncle  Demipho,  by  some 
contrivance  or  other,  the  sum  needful  for  the  purchase 
of  his  dear  music-girl  from  her  master — only  a  poor  hun- 
dred guineas.  "  She's  a  very  dear  bargain,"  remarks 
the  old  servitor.  Phsedria  insists,  of  course,  that  she  is 
cheap  at  any  price ;  and  Geta  promises  to  do  his  best 
to  get  the  money 

The  return  of  Phaedria's  father — Chremes,  the  elder 
of  the  two  brothers  —  from  the  island  of  Lemnos, 
threatens  to  complicate  matters  :  but  it  turns  out  that 
he  brings  with  him  the  key  to  at  least  the  great  diffi- 
culty. He  has  been  to  the  island  on  some  private 
business,  the  nature  of  which  is  known  to  his  brother 
Demipho,  but  which  is  kept  a  strict  secret  from  his 
wife  Nausistrata,  of  whom  he  stands  in  considerable 
awe.  The  secret  is  partly  disclosed  in  the  scene  be- 
tween the  two  brothers  on  his  return.  Chremes  had 
contracted,  in  his  younger  and  more  imprudent  days, 
while  visiting  Lemnos,  a  private  marriage  (under 
another  name)  with  a  person  in  that  island,  the  issue 
of  which  was  a  daughter.  He  had  broken  off  this 
connection  for  some  years ;  but  the  object  of  this  last 
voyage  had  been  to  make  some  inquiries  about  this 
duplicate  family.  He  has  formed  a  plan,  with  his 
brother's  approval,  to  marry  this  unacknowledged 
daughter,  now  grown  up  to  womanhood,  to  her  cousin 
Antipho ;  and  is  therefore  as  anxious  as  his  brother 
to  get  this  present  unfortunate  marriage,  which  they 
both  look  upon  as  contracted  under  false  pretences, 

fin  qu'au  commencement ;  "    and   in    '  M.   de   Pourceaugnac, 
act  ii.  sc.  13,  where  the  "  Deux  Avocats  "  chant  their  opinions. 


P  HO  JIM  10.  M.3 

annulled  if  possible.  So  when  Phormio  comes  and 
offers  to  take  the  young  lady  off  everybody's  hands 
and  marry  her  himself,  if  Demipho  will  give  her  a 
dowry  of  a  hundred  guineas,  Chremes -persuades  his 
brother  to  close  with  the  offer,  and  even  advances 
great  part  of  the  sum  :  which  Phormio  hands  over 
to  his  young  friend  Phtedria  for  the  ransom  of  his 
mistress. 

Chremes  has  learned  that,  while  he  was  on  his  voyage 
to  Lemnos,  his  deserted  wife  has  meanwhile  come  over 
to  Athens  in  search  of  him,  and  brought  the  daughter 
with  her.  He  is  scon  further  enlightened  upon  this 
subject.  As  he  is  crossing  the  street  from  his  own 
house  to  his  brother's,  he  sees  a  woman  coming  from  it. 
It  is  Sophrona,  the  old  nurse  of  this  foreign  girl  whom 
his  nephew  has  married,  and  who  is  now  stowed  away 
somewhere  in  her  unwilling  father-in-law's  house.  The 
nurse  has  been  there  to  try  to  discover  what  turn 
affairs  are  likely  to  take,  now  that  the  old  gentleman 
has  come  home. 

Chremes  (looking  at  her  stealthily).     Eh  !    bless  me  ! 

Yes — or  do  my  eyes  deceive  me  ? 
Yes — this  is  certainly  my  daughter's  nurse  ! 

Sophrona  (to  lierself,  not  seeing  Chremes).     And  then, 

to  think  the  father  can't  be  found  ! 
Chr.  What  shall  I  do  ?    Shall  I  speak  first,  or  wait 
Till  I  hear  more  ? 

Soph.  Oh  !  if  we  could  but  find  him, 

All  might  go  well ! 

Chr.   (coming  forward],       'Tis    she,  no    doubt  ;    I'll 

speak. 

Soph,  (hearing  his  voice).  Who's  that  ?    I  heard  a  voice 
there ! 


144  THE  COMEDIES  OF  TERENCE. 

Chr.  Sophrona  ! 

Soph.  He  knows  my  name  ! 

Chr.  Look  at  me,  Sophrona. 

Soph,  (looking  dose  at  him).     Oh  !   gracious  heavens ! 
What  !  are  'v  ou  Stilpho  ? 

Chr.  (making  signs  to  her  to  be  silenf).     No. 

Soph.  Can  you  deny  it  ? 

Chr.  •        Hnsh-sh  !  come  further  off ! — 

A  little  further  from  the  door,  good  Sophrona — 
And  never  call  me  by  that  name  again  ! 

Soph.  Why,  by  that  name  we  always  knew  you ! 

Chr.  (pointing  to  the  door  opposite).  • — Sh  ! 

Soph.  What  makes  you  afraid  of  that  door  ? 

Chr.  (coming  near  her,  in  a  Italf-tvhisper).  Why,  because 
It's  got  my  wife  inside — an  awful  woman  ! 
That's  why  I  took  another  name,  you  see. 
For  fear  lest  you  might  blab  my  real  one, 
And  she  (pointing  to  the  door)  should  hear  it. 

Soph.  'Twas  no  wonder,  then, 

We  could  hear  nothing  of  you  here  in  Athens. 

— Act  v.  sc.  1. 

He  learns  from  the  old  nurse  that  his  Lemnian  wife 
is  dead,  and  that  his  daughter  is  just  married  to  his 
nephew  Antipho.  In  the  bewilderment  of  the  moment 
he  fails  to  identify  the  fair  subject  of  the  lawsuit  with 
his  own  daughter :  and  perhaps  only  those  who  have 
seen  this  play  acted  by  Westminster  scholars  can 
appreciate  the  comic  earnestness  with  which  the  uncle, 
with  his  own  double  relations  strong  in  his  mind,  and 
fancying  that  his  young  nephew  is  in  the  same  predica- 
ment, asks  of  Sophrona — 

"  What — has  he  two  wives  ? " 
When  he  finds  out  that  the  two  wives  are  one  and  the 


PI10RMIO.  145 

same,  and  that  his  Lemnian  daughter  is  really  married, 
by  a  happy  accident,  to  the  very  husband  he  had  designed 
for  her,  lie  blesses  the  gods  for  his  good  fortune,  and  it 
is  plain  that  all  Antipho's  difficulties  are  over. 

But  Chremes,  unluckily,  joins  his  brother  in  an 
attempt  to  recover  from  Phormio  the  gold  pieces  which 
he  has  got  from  them  under  pretence  of  dowry.  They 
don't  want  him  to  marry  Phanium  now,  of  course;  and 
they  see  no  reason  for  his  not  returning  the  money. 
But  Phormio,  with  his  usual  cleverness,  has  made 
himself  master  of  the  whole  story.  He  declares  his 
willingness  to  complete  at  once  Ms  part  of  the  bargain, 
and  protests,  with  considerable  show  of  justice,  that  he 
will  not  be  cheated  out  of  wife  and  dowry  too.  He 
threatens  Chremes  that  unless  he  holds  his  tongue 
about  the  money,  he  will  tell  his  wife  Nausistrata  all 
about  that  little  establishment  at  Lemnos.  This  impu- 
dence is  more  than  Demipho  can  stand,  and  he  calls  his 
slaves  to  carry  off  the  parasite  to  jail.  The  noise  he 
makes  brings  in  Nausistrata,  and  though  both  the 
brothers  try  to  stop  his  mouth,  he  carries  his  threat 
into  execution.  Nausistrata,  of  course,  is  in  a  con- 
siderable fury  at  first :  but  as  her  rival  is  dead,  and  this 
unnecessary  daughter  safely  disposed  of,  she  is  satisfied 
with  the  rod  which  Phormio  has  put  into  her  hands  to 
be  wielded  over  her  husband  in  any  future  connubial 
disagreement ;  and,  partly  out  of  gratitude  for  this 
acquisition  of  power,  and  partly  to  annoy  her  husband, 
invites  him  at  once  to  supper.  The  parasite  foresees 
that  there  will  always  be  a  knife  and  fork  ready  for 
him  at  her  table  as  well  as  at  Phanium's. 

A.  c.  vol.  xvi.  K 


146  THE   COMEDIES  OF   TERENCE. 


VI. — THE    BROTHERS. 

This  comedy,  like  'Phormio,'  has  always  been  a 
favourite  with  the  "Westminster  actors.  It  is  taken 
partly  from  a  play  of  Menander,  and  partly  from  one 
l>y  another  Greek  dramatist,  Diphilus.  It  was  acted 
lately  at  Westminster  with  great  success,  and  it  may 
be  permissible  to  borrow,  as  a  familiar  rendering  of  the 
early  portion  of  the  story,  a  few  verses  from  the  clever 
sketch  of  the  "  Plot "  which  was  handed  round  on  that 
occasion  for  the  enlightenment  of  the  less  classical 
among  the  audience  • — 

"  Two  brothers  once  in  Athens  dwelt  of  old, 

Though  widely  did  their  dispositions  differ  ; 
One  loved  the  country,  was  a  churl  and  scold, 
The  other  bland  and  gentle  as  a  zephyr. 

Demea,  the  churl,  had  once  a  wife,  since  dead, 
And,  as  it  seems,  he  did  not  much  regret  her  ; 

Micio,  the  bland,  had  not  been  so  miss-led, 
And  never  took  a  wife,  for  worse  or  better. 

Now  Demea  had  two  sons  ;  but  he  did  predicate 
That  one  was  quite  enough  ;  and  gave  the  other — 

The  elder  of  the  two — to  rear  and  educate, 
In  short,  to  be  adopted,  by  his  brother. 

The  youngest,  Ctesipho,  at  home  was  taught, 
Was  duly  lectured,  disciplined,  and  scolded  ; 

Rose  early — read — walked — and,  as  Demea  thought, 
Iiito  a  rural  innocent  was  moulded. 


THE  BROTHERS.  117 

But  Micio  loved  the  city,  and,  forsooth  ! 

Ne'er  thought  of  looking  after  his  adopted  ; 
But  if  he  told  the  truth,  and  all  the  truth, 

Whatever  prank  was  played,  he  never  stopped  it." 

Demea  has  protested  from  time  to  time  against  his 
brother's  very  lax  system  of  discipline  ;  and  when  he 
finds  that  young  ./Eschinus's  not  very  steady  course  has 
just  culminated  in  a  tremendous  and  notorious  row- 
that  he  has  broken  open  the  house  of  a  slave-dealer, 
beaten  the  master,  and  carried  off  a  young  woman — 
he  lectures  his  brother  severely  on  the  results  of  his 
ill-judged  indulgence. 

But  Ctesipho,  who  has  been  kept  in  stricter  leading- 
strings  by  the  father,  is  not  quite  the  pattern  youth 
that  the  old  gentleman   thinks   him.       He  is  really 
the  person  most  concerned  in  the  brawl  which  caused 
so  much   scandal ;    for   the  girl   who  has   been  thus 
forcibly  carried  off  from  her  owner  is  a  young  music-girl 
with  whom  he  has  fallen  in  love — who  claims,  however, 
as  usual,  to  be  free-born  and  entitled  to  all  the  rights 
of  citizenship.     ^Eschinu^,  not  standing  so  much  in 
fear  of  his  good-natured  guardian  as  the  other  does  of 
his  father,  and  having,  besides,  no  great  reputation  to 
lose,   is   content  to  take  upon  himself  all  the  blame 
of  the  late  burglary  and  abduction  ;  though   Ctesipho 
has  been  really  the  principal  in  the  affair,  in  which 
his  brother  lias  only  aided  and  abetted  out  of  pure 
fraternal   affection.       There    is    the    usual    intriguing 
slave,  Syrus,  who  is  of  course  in  the  secret ;  and  who 
persuades    the    father   that    Ctesipho    is    gone    down 
to  the  country  grange,  whither  Demea    follows  him, 
quite  persuaded  that  he  shall  find  his  exemplary  sou 


148  THE   COMKDIKS  OF   TKREXCE. 

deep  in  farming  operations.  He  is,  in  fact,  at  this  mo- 
ment taking  care  of  his  prize  in  /Eschinus's  apartments 
in  his  uncle's  house,  whither  she  has  been  conducted. 

Syrus,  delighted  to  have  such  an  opportunity  of 
exorcising  his  wit  upon  Deinea,  whose  principles  of 
education  he  altogether  dislikes,  compliments  him 
highly  upon  his  son  Ctesipho's  irreproachable  conduct. 
He  declares  that  the  good  youth  has  been  quite  shocked 
at  his  elder  brother's  iniquity,  and  has  reproached  him 
with  the  discredit  he  was  bringing  on  the  family. 

Syrus.  jEschinus,  quoth  lie,  I  am  ashamed  of  you — 
You  waste  not  money  only,  but  your  life. 

Demea.  Heaven  bless  him  !  he'll  be  worthy  of  his  fore- 
fathers. 

Syr.  I'm  sure  he  will. 

Dem.  Syrus,  he's  had  good  teaching. 

Syr.  Ah  .'  he  had  those  at  home  who  understood  it. 

Dem.  I  do  take  pains  ;  I  omit  no  single  item  ; 
I  train  him  well  ;  in  fact,  I  bid  him  study, 
As  in  a  mirror,  all  the  characters 
He  sees  around  him,  and  diaw  from  them  lessons 
For  his  own  guidance  :  copy  this,  I  say — 

$yr.  Ah  !  capital  I 

Dem.  This,  again,  avoid — 

Syr.  Just  so. 

Dem.  This  act,  I  say,  is  praiseworthy — 

Syr.  Quite  right 

Dem.  That  was  a  fault — 

Syr.  I  see. 

Dem.  And  then,  besides — 

Syr.  I  beg  yonr  pardon — I  could  listen  all  day — 
But  I'm  so  busy  :  there's  some  splendid  fish — 
I  must  not  let  them  spoil  :  for  this,  you  see, 
In  my  vocation,  sir,  would  be  a  sin, 


Tin:  mi  OTHERS.  149 

Just  as,  with  gentlefolks,  neglect  of  morals  : 

Indeed,  in  my  poor  sphere,  I  train  my  knaves 

Exactly  on  your  worship's  principle.    Look  liero, 

I  say,  that  dish  's  too  salt  ;  this  roust  is  burned — 

That's  not  washed  clean  ;  that  fricassee  is  good — 

Just  the  right  thing — be  sure  the  next  is  like  it 

The  best  advice  that  my  poor  wit  affords 

I  strive  to  give    (looking  gravely  at  J)cmea,  and  c»]iyii«j 

his  manner).     In  short,  I  bid  them  study 
As  in  a  mirror,  every  dish  I  make, 
Thus  to  draw  lessons  for  their  own  instruction. 
'Tis  but  a  humble  school,  I  feel,  I  train  them  in  ; 
But  we  must  do  our  best — man  can't  do  more. — 
(Bowing  demur  rly).  Can  I  oblige  you,  sir,  in  any  way  ? 
Dem.  (angrily).  Yes — mend  your  manners.* 

— Act  iii.  sc.  3. 

The  elder  of  the  young  men  has  in  truth  perplexities 
enough  of  his  own  to  have  justified  him,  if  he  had  been 
less  good-natured,  in  declining  to  involve  himself  in 
those  of  his  brother.  He  lias  an  unacknowledged  wife, 
and  just  at  this  time  the  not  very  welcome  addition 
of  a  baby.  The  news  of  his  having  been  engaged  in 
this  brawl,  and  having  carried  off  the  singing-girl  to 
his  uncle's  house,  soon  reaches  the  ears  of  Sostrata, 
his  very  respectable  mother-in-law  :  who  comes  to  the 
natural  conclusion  that  ^Eschinus  is  faithless  to  his 
poor  wife  at  this  interesting  crisis,  and  intends  to  re- 
pudiate her  altogether,  instead  of  presenting  her  to 
his  uncle,  as  he  had  promised,  and  obtaining  his  sanc- 
tion to  their  public  union.  By  the  advice  of  Geta,  an 
old  and  trusty  servant,  who  has  remained  with  them 
in  their  reduced  fortunes  (for  there  are  faithful  slaves, 

*  Horace  had  probably  this  dialogue  in  his  mind,  Sat.  I.  i\'.  103. 


150  THE   COMEDIES  OF   TEHEXtK. 

in  these  comedies,  as  well  as  the  more  common  type 
of  dishonest  ones),  they  lay  the  case  before  an  old 
friend  of  the  family,  the  excellent  Hegio,  who  under- 
takes to  represent  to  Micio  the  great  wrong  which  ib 
being  done  by  his  ward  to  his  unfortunate  young  rel- 
ative. On  his  way  to  Micio's  house  he  falls  in  with 
Demea,  who  is  an  old  acquaintance,  and  informs  him  of 
this  new  enormity  on  the  part  of  young  ^Elschinus,  at 
which  the  father  can  only  lift  up  his  hands  and  eyes, 
and  lament  over  this  still  more  convincing  proof  of  the 
sad  results  of  such  a  training  as  the  youth  has  had 
from  his  uncle. 

But  on  his  way  to  his  country-house  he  meets  a 
workman  who  tells  him  that  his  own  dear  Ctesipho 
has  not  been  seen  there  since  he  left.  So  he  goes  back 
to  make  inquiry  about  him  at  his  brother's, — inquiry 
which,  under  present  circumstances,  is  somewhat  awk- 
ward to  meet.  Yes, — he  has  been  there,  Syrus  tells 
him,  and  points  to  his  own  bandaged  head  as  evidence. 
The  good  youth  was  so  indignant  at  his  brother's  con- 
duct that  lie  took  him  to  task  roundly,  and  ended  by 
beating  the  music-wench,  and  breaking  poor  Syrus's 
head.  "  He  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  himself,"  says 
the  latter  whimpering, — "  a  poor  old  man  like  me,  that 
nursed  him  !  " — "  Not  at  all,"  replies  the  unsympathetic 
Demea  ;  "  'tis  you  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  yourself — 
you  nursed  his  brother  in  wickedness  ! "  He  next  in- 
quires of  the  slave  Avhere  his  brother  Micio  is  ;  for  he 
wants  to  expostulate  with  him  about  this  unfortunate 
business.  He  is  not  at  home,  Syrus  assures  him  ;  but 
he  will  give  him  full  directions  where  to  find  him. 
He  must  go  through  the  portico  behind  the  shambles, 


THE    BROTHKRS.  101 

down  tlie  next  street,  then  to  the  right,  then  up  the 
next,  then  to  the  left,  past  the  chapel,  through  the 
narrow  lane  where  the  wild  fig-tree  stands,  straight  on 
to  Diana's  temple,  then  to  the  right ;  then  he  will  si-e 
a  mill,  with  a  joiner's  shop  opposite,  where  his  brother 
is  gone  to  order  an  oak  table  :  and  with  these  very 
particular  directions,  which  will  give  the  old  gentle- 
man a  good  long  afternoon's  walk  through  the  suburbs, 
he  gets  rid  of  him  for  the  present.  The  two  young 
men  are  in  the  house  all  the  time,  having  a  little 
dinner  in  celebration  of  the  successful  rescue  of  Ctesi- 
pho's  fair  friend  ;  and  Syrus,  having  got  rid,  for  some 
hours  at  least,  of  this  inconvenient  visitor,  will  take 
the  opportunity  of  this  festive  occasion  to  get  royally 
drunk. 

JEschinus  soon  learns  the  misconstruction  which  has 
been  put  upon  his  conduct ;  for  when  he  next  goes  to 
his  lodgings  to  visit  his  young  wife,  he  is  refused  ad- 
mittance. Neither  she  nor  her  mother  will  have  any- 
thing more  to  do  with  such  a  villain.  But  in  the  crisis 
of  his  distress  he  is  encountered  by  his  good  natured 
guardian,  to  whom  Hegio  has  told  the  whole  story,  and 
who  has  gone  at  once  to  see  for  himself  what  kind  of 
people  these  new  connections  are:  and  he — after  playing 
for  a  little  while  with  the  young  man's  anxiety — throws 
him  at  last  into  ecstasies  of  joy  and  gratitude  by  magna- 
nimously promising  to  recognise  his  wife,  and  desiring 
him  to  bring  her  home  to  his  house  as  soon  as  he  thinks 
proper. 

Demea  returns  from  his  long  walk  in  search  of  his 
brother,  very  hot  and  very  angry.  He  has  not  been 
able  to  find  the  "joiner's  shop,"  and  half  suspects 


152  TIIK   COMKDIRS  OF   TKRKXGE. 

that  Syrus  has  been  fooling  him  :  for  he  meets  Micio 
just  coming  out  of  his  own  house.  He  attacks  him 
with  the  story  of  this  new  escapade  of  his  precious 
ward  ^Eschinus  ;  hut  his  brother  listens  with  a  compo- 
sure which  is  exceedingly  irritating. 

Demea.  He's  got  a  wife  ! 

Micio.  "Well — better  he  than  I. 

Dem.  She's  got  a  baby  ! 

Mic.  Doing  well,  I  hope  ? 

Dem.  The  jade's  an  absolute  beggar  ! 

Mic.  So  I  hear. 

Dem.  You  mean  you'll  take  her  in  without  a  sixpence  / 

Mic.  I  do. 

Dem*  What's  to  become  of  them  ? 

Mic.  Of  course 

They  must  come  here. 

Dem.  (ironically).         Why,  you  seem  quite  delighted  ! 

Mic.  No — not  if  I  could  alter  it     Look  ye,  brother, 
Man's  life  is  as  it  were  a  game  of  tables  ; 
If  that  the  throw  we  want  will  not  turn  up, 
Skill  must  correct  such  luck  as  fortune  gives  us. 

—Act  iv.  sc.  7. 

It  is  the  better  side  of  the  Epicurean  philosophy, 
put  into  few  and  terse  words ;  and  we  shall  probably 
not  be  wrong  in  assuming  the  lines  to  be  pretty 
closely  translated  from  Menander,  who  may  not  impro- 
bably have  had  the  idea  from  Epicurus  himself. 

Another  precious  example  of  his  brother's  domestic 
discipline  meets  Demea  as  he  comes  away  from  this 
unsatisfactory  interview.  It  is  Syrus,  so  drunk  as  to 
have  lost  even  the  semblance  of  respectful  demeanour. 

Syr.  (staggering  up  against  Demea).  Oho  !   you're  back 
again,  are  you,  Mr  Wisdom  ? 


THE   BROTHERS.  lf>:3 

Dem.  (pushing   him   away}.    If    you   were   my   slave, 

sirrah — 

Syr.  YouM  Vie  lucky — 

You'd  have  a  (hiccup}  treasure — save  you  half  your  income. 
Dem.  (shaking  hu  stick  at  Jiiin).   I'd  make  an  example 

of  ye  ! 

(Enter  Dromo,  another  slave,  running  from  the  house.} 
Dro.  Hallo — Syms  ! 

Ctesipho  wants  ye  ! 

Syr.  (aside  to  him).     Hush-sh  !  away,  you  fool ! 
Dem.  Ctesipho  1 — here  '/ 

Syr.  N-no,  n-no,  sir  I — it's  not  him, 

It's — it's — another  young  man — a  little  parasite — 
Of  the  same  name. — You  know  him,  don't  you,  sir  ? 

Dem.  I  very  soon  will,  at  any  rate   (making  for  the 

house). 
Syr.  (trying  to  hold  him  back].  Stop,  sir,  stop  f 

But  the  father  has  heard  enough  to  open  his  eyes. 
He  rushes  in,  spite  of  Syrus's  drunken  efforts  to  stop 
him,  and  makes  at  last  full  discovery  of  how  he  has 
been  deceived.  Micio  succeeds  in  soothing  him  in 
some  degree,  by  assuring  him  that  his  own  fortune  is 
ample  enough  to  supply  both  the  young  men's  wants ; 
that  he  will  give  a  dowry  also  to  Ctesipho  with  his 
beloved,  and  see  him  married  respectably. 

The  failure  of  his  own  system,  and  the  placid 
triumph  of  his  easy  brother,  work  an  odd  transforma- 
tion in  Demea's  behaviour.  He  meets  this  "  irony  of 
events  "  by  a  curious  irony  of  his  own.  Since  easy 
temper  is  the  mode,  he  will  at  once  adopt  it.  He 
begins  by  shaking  hands  with  Syrus,  and  thanking 
him  for  his  admirable  conduct — he  will  certainly  do 
something  for  him.  Then  he  meets  Geta,  and  shakes 


154  THK    COMEDIES    OF    TEIIKXCK. 

hands  with  him  (who  certainly  deserves  it  Letter) ;  he 
will  do  something  for  him  too.  He  persuades  his 
brother  to  give  Syrus  his  freedom,  with  a  sum  of 
money  to  set  him  up  in  life,  "  hy  way  of  encourage- 
ment to  honest  servants,"  as  he  ironically  puts  it.  He 
will  have  him  make  a  deed  of  gift  of  a  snug  farm  to 
Hegio,  who  has  acted  the  part  of  a  good  relation  so 
manfully;  and  he  ends  by  persuading  the  old  bachelor 
himself  to  marry  the  excellent  Sostrata,  his  ward's 
mother-in-law — a  lone  woman,  much  in  want  of  a  pro- 
tector. The  good-natured  Micio  does  make  some  wry 
faces  at  this  last  item  in  the  arrangements,  hut  his 
brother's  arguments  as  to  the  great  duty  of  pleasing 
everybody  are  too  strong  for  him.  If  complaisance 
with  other  people's  fancies,  and  reckless  liberality,  are 
the  right  thing,  Demea  is  determined  to  give  his 
brother  full  opportunity  to  put  in  practice  this  new- 
fangled virtue. 


In  obedience  to  an  ordinance  contained  in  the 
Charter  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  the  AYestminster  Scholars 
present  every  year,  on  three  nights  just  before  Christ- 
mas, a  Latin  play.  The  performance,  which  takes 
place  in  the  Dormitory  of  the  College,  with  appro- 
priate scenery  and  costume,  is  perfectly  unique  of  its 
kind,  and  is  the  only  relic  of  an  ancient  custom  once 
common  to  all  our  great  schools.  Although,  as  has  al- 
ready been  noticed,  a  comedy  of  Plautus  has  occasion- 
ally been  selected,  Terence  lias  always  been  the  favourite. 
Four  of  his  comedies — '  The  Maid  of  Andros,'  '  The 
Ethiopian  Slave,'  '  Phormio,'  and  '  The  Brothers '— 


THE    COMEDIES   OF   TEREXCK.  1.V, 

are  usually  taken  in  rotation  ;  and  a  Queen's  Scholar 
who  shows  any  dramatic  talent  is  not  unfrequently  an 
actor  in  two  or  three.of  these  plays  successively.  The 
performance  is  preceded  by  a  Latin  prologue,  in  which 
such  events  of  the  year  as  have  affected  the  school  are 
briefly  touched  upon  :  and  followed  by  an  epilogue  in 
elegiac  verse,  which  of  late  years  has  assumed  almost 
the  dimensions  of  a  farce,  in  which  the  current  topics 
or  follies  of  the  day  are  satirised  under  an  amusing 
disguise  of  classical  names  and  associations. 


END  OP  PLAUTUS  AND  TEUENCB. 


